Gastein Valley

The Gastein valley lies in the Salzburg Alps, a forty-kilometre trough carved by the Gastein Ache and framed by the Hohe Tauern’s highest ridges. The valley opens northward into the Salzach basin, while its southern end is reached only through the Tauerntunnel or the Klammsteintunnel. At Böckstein the narrow Naßfelder and Anlauf valleys join, and on the slopes above stands the 1980s ski village of Naßfeld-Sportgastein at 1 589 metres. The valley’s fame rests on three pillars: alpine farming, thermal bathing and mining. From the 13th century cattle grazed high summer pastures that still dot the flanks, while the first written record of the healing springs appears in a 1230 poem by the medieval poet Neidhart von Reuental. In the 16th century Paracelsus studied the waters, and in the 19th century emperors Franz Josef and Elisabeth made Gastein a fashionable cure. The discovery of radon in the water by Marie Curie in 1904 and the arrival of the Tauern railway in 1909 turned the valley into a year-round resort. Visitors walk the Gasteiner Klamm, a narrow gorge sliced through resistant limestone by the Ache, or ride the Tauernbahn through tunnels blasted for the transalpine railway. In Bad Gastein the spa quarter preserves grand Belle Époque facades, while at Böckstein the old gold-mining village houses the southern portal of the Tauerntunnel. Above the valley the high-alpine huts built under Erzherzog Johann’s initiative offer routes into the Tauern peaks.