Austria

An Alpine village of fewer than a thousand residents wedged between a sheer limestone cliff and a deep mountain lake, built above the world's oldest working salt mine and a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape since 1997.

A Benedictine abbey rebuilt in Baroque form between 1702 and 1736 on a cliff above the Danube, designed by Jakob Prandtauer as one of the most accomplished Baroque architectural ensembles in Europe, still an active monastery.

One of the best-preserved baroque city centres in the German-speaking world, grouped around a cathedral piazza and dominated by the Festung Hohensalzburg fortress above and the Getreidegasse shopping street below.

The Habsburgs' grandest summer residence: 1,441 rooms, French formal park, and the Gloriette on a ridge above Vienna, transformed by Maria Theresa into the centre of the Austrian Enlightenment.

The world's first mountain railway, built 1848–1854 across the Alpine Semmering Pass, a 41-kilometre line with 16 viaducts and 14 tunnels that is still in daily commercial use and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.

The Habsburg imperial capital's historic core: the Hofburg palace, baroque squares, the Ringstrasse boulevard of monumental Ringstrasse buildings, the Musikverein concert hall, and the Naschmarkt food market, UNESCO-listed since 2001.