St Polten Old Town

Sankt Pölten received town rights in 1159, which makes it the oldest chartered town in Austria, and it was a monastic and market centre long before that on the Roman site of Aelium Cetium. The old town is compact and largely baroque: the Rathausplatz and Herrenplatz with painted façades, the cathedral with a Romanesque core and a heavy baroque interior by Jakob Prandtauer, who lived and died here, the Franciscan church, and a plague column. What changed the city was 1986, when Lower Austria - which had been governed from Vienna despite Vienna not being part of it - chose Sankt Pölten as its capital, and a whole government and cultural quarter was built on the Traisen from 1992, including the Festspielhaus and the Landesmuseum, in a deliberately modern idiom.

What you actually see

• A baroque old town - Rathausplatz, Herrenplatz and painted merchant façades.
• Prandtauer's cathedral interior - the baroque work over a Romanesque core.
• A built-from-nothing capital quarter - the 1990s government district on the Traisen.
• The oldest town charter in Austria - granted in 1159.

When to go

All year. Half a day.

Honest expectations

It is a working provincial capital, not a tourist town - the old centre is small and quiet on Sundays. The government quarter is architecture rather than sightseeing. Museums close Mondays.

Nearby

The Mariazellerbahn runs south; Melk and the Wachau are west.