Linz

The route follows the Danube and covers a thousand years of church building: from the Martinskirche, first recorded in 799, through the two cathedrals to the Christkönigkirche. With them the castle, the main square and its Trinity Column, the Brucknerhaus on the bank, Wilhering Abbey six kilometres upstream and the heights of Pöstlingberg and Freinberg.

The Mariendom, begun in 1862 and consecrated in 1924, is Austria's largest church by capacity, about 20,000 people, not by height: 134.69 metres, some two metres below St Stephen's in Vienna. The story that nothing in Austria-Hungary was allowed to rise above the Steffl is a legend with no evidence. The Martinskirche was likewise long held to be Austria's oldest surviving church; research no longer supports that. Roman gravestones of the third century are built into its walls.

Anton Bruckner was organist at the Old Cathedral from 1856 to 1868, on an instrument Chrismann built in 1768 for Engelszell Abbey. The concert hall on the Danube that carries his name opened on 23 March 1974 under Karajan. Frederick III died in the castle on 19 August 1493, and the city fire of 1800 started there. From the old town hall balcony Hitler proclaimed the annexation on 12 March 1938; it has not been used since 1988.