Siriuskogl

The Siriuskogl is a 599-metre-high city hill rising from the Traun valley floor near Bad Ischl in Upper Austria’s Salzkammergut. It stands as an island of forest surrounded by the river’s loop, with the Sulzbach stream skirting its southern flank. The hill was once called Hundskogel, but during the 19th-century summer-residence era it was renamed after Sirius, the Dog Star. A second name, Einsiedlerstein, marks the large erratic boulder left by the Traun glacier.

The hill’s Hallstätter limestone, packed with Triassic fossils, has yielded new species of planktonic shrimps described early in the 20th century by Ernst Kittl. A wooden lookout tower was built on the summit in 1885 and is now called the Siriuskogelwarte. It offers sweeping views across the Salzkammergut and contains a free telescope plus a visitors’ book. Below the tower a city-owned inn serves meals and hosts concerts and traditional costume balls.

Paths circle the hill on gentle gradients, and a sealed road from the north reaches the summit where the Einsiedlerstein perches beside the Siriuskoglgasse. The forest is mainly mixed beech and spruce, giving way to open meadows near the top. On clear days the outlook takes in the Ischler Becken, the Kaltenbach district and the distant peaks of the Toten Gebirge.