A Bounty of Beautiful Baroque

Hotel Restaurant Mader

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Restaurant | "Nice Setting, Nice Food, Slow Service"

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The 300 year old hotel and restaurant Mader are located near the center of Steyr’s attractive old town square. The ground floor restaurant has three modest sized dinning rooms, each attractively furnished in different traditional styles. Just to the right of the entrance is long narrow bar/restaurant in dark wood. Straight ahead at the end of the entrance hall is the largest dining room, featuring a rustic garden theme. Off to the right side of the this room is the smallest of the dinning rooms, a stone vault looking like an ancient wine cellar. My Wiener Schnitzel was pretty good, but short of the highest standard for this classic Austrian dish. The main problem was the cut of bo...Read More

The 300 year old hotel and restaurant Mader are located near the center of Steyr’s attractive old town square. The ground floor restaurant has three modest sized dinning rooms, each attractively furnished in different traditional styles. Just to the right of the entrance is long narrow bar/restaurant in dark wood. Straight ahead at the end of the entrance hall is the largest dining room, featuring a rustic garden theme. Off to the right side of the this room is the smallest of the dinning rooms, a stone vault looking like an ancient wine cellar.

My Wiener Schnitzel was pretty good, but short of the highest standard for this classic Austrian dish. The main problem was the cut of boneless veal cutlet was too thick. A proper Wiener Schnitzel should be pounded thin, about the thickness of 3-4 unboxed CDs stacked one on top of the other. This serves a dual purpose– quickly cooked, the meat will cook up tender but the breaded coating will not burn, cooking crisp to a light golden color– think of a tender piece of veal wrapped in potato chips. While meat inside the breading was perfectly cooked, its excessive thickness resulted in the crust bordering on being burned, and the whole thing was too thick to easily cut with the side of a fork (a simple test of the ability of the kitchen to do Wiener Schnitzel right is that it should be easy to cut with a fork).

The veal was accompanied by a nicely prepared boiled potato (a classic side for Wiener Schnitzel) and rice. Portions were ample, it was a very filling meal even without bread.

Lots of people drink white wine, especaily a Riesling type, with Wiener Schnitzel. We prefer Austrian beer, especially dark beer, and remember, if you get a waiter like the one we had the Mader about 30 years ago who told us, "Americans don’t drink dark beer", he was just trying to be helpful to be sure we know what we were doing. When we confirmed we meant to order dark beer, he was most pleased to have met some Americans who did know what they were doing when it came to ordering beer.

The restaurant was busy, and it took an unusually long time to get served afer placing the order. Of all the restaurants I ate in on this trip, service at Mader was the slowest. Service was brisk, bordering on brusk, but friendly and professional.

A sample of the dinner menu: Starters: Cream soup with Potatoes, Tomatoes or Leeks; Clear soup with sliced pancakes, liver dumplings or semolina dumplings; Mixed salad with fried bacon
Main dishes: "Steyrer Flösserbraten" - cured pork with potato dumplings and warm cabbage salad; Ragout of turkey with small flour dumplings and broccoli; "Szegediner Gulasch" - pork goulash with sauerkraut, boiled potatoes and sour cream; Meatballs with mashed potatoes and green salad; "Penne arrabbiatta" (noodles with onion, pepperoni and garlic) with Parmesan cheese; Tagliolini with rucola, tomatoes, pine seeds, Pecorino cheese and prosciuto; Small egg dumplings with green salad
Beef roulades (carrots, bacon, gherkins) with cream sauce and herbal speatzle; Veal goulash with small butter dumplings; Risotto with tomatoes, rucola and seafood; Roasted pike perch with fine herb butter and parsley potatoes; "Wiener Schnitzel" from pork with rice, potatoes and mixed salad (a note on sneaky restaurant practices. Some German, Swiss, and Austrian restaurant try to pass breaded pork off as breaded veal– Wiener Schnitzel. He pork verison is properly called Schwein Schnitzel. When in doubt ask); Fried chicken with rice and mixed salad; Steak of salmon on cress sauce with noodles and grilled vegetables; Roasted fillet of trout with parsley potatoes and leaf salad; roasted slices of pork fillet in a sauce of mushrooms and cognac with noodles "provencale"; Pork loins with hot sauce, vegetables and fine croquette potatoes; Mixed grill with fried potatoes, vegetables and sauces; Sirloin steak with fried onions, beans, roasted potatoes and pickled cucumbers; "Tafelspitz" – boiled round of beef with baked potatoes, horseradish sauce and root vegetables; Stuffed breast of chicken (with spinach), water cress sauce, noodles and sweet corn
Desserts: "Black forest" cake; Cake "Szomlo" with cranberries and chocolate sauce; Panna Cotta on a stew of wild berries; Sweet cheese dumplings with fruit sauce; "Apfelschlangerl" – dessert with apples; "Drunken munk" - nut cake with mulled spiced cider and whipped cream;
Chocolate cake (pudding) with whipped cream

I first considered diner at the hotel Minichmayer, long our favorite restaurant in Austria, but it had been remodeled and the menu changed since our last visit, neither for the good in my book, so I went out exploring. The Wiener Schnitzel at H. Mader Restaurant was 15 Euros, 2 Euros less that the same dish at the Minichmayer.
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Member Rating 3 out of 5 on April 9, 2010

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Hotel & Restaurant Minichmayr

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Hotel | "Nicely Furnished, Good Location, but Street Noise in Some Rooms"

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The Hotel Minichmayer, a member of the Romantic Hotels group, is located on the river bank just below the confluence of the Steyr and Enns rivers. The river facing side of the hotel (the restaurant and some rooms) offers great views of the old city along the river bank. A single room in September 2009 was roughly $75. My room, long and narrow, faced a side street that produced prodigious traffic noise when there was traffic, which luckily was sparse, especially at night. There was a street light just outside my window, which, combined with the flimsy curtains, made the light at night inside the room brighter than daytime. Fortunately, I started carrying two sheets of black plastic ...Read More

The Hotel Minichmayer, a member of the Romantic Hotels group, is located on the river bank just below the confluence of the Steyr and Enns rivers. The river facing side of the hotel (the restaurant and some rooms) offers great views of the old city along the river bank.

A single room in September 2009 was roughly $75. My room, long and narrow, faced a side street that produced prodigious traffic noise when there was traffic, which luckily was sparse, especially at night. There was a street light just outside my window, which, combined with the flimsy curtains, made the light at night inside the room brighter than daytime. Fortunately, I started carrying two sheets of black plastic when we travel, so I was able to block the outside light quite well by attaching the plastic to the curtain with clothes pins.

The compact room was nicely furnished with a couch, desk, desk chair, TV, and a suitcase table. The bed was one of the most comfortable on the trip. The bathroom was compact but well furnished.

The Minichmayer is in an old, odd shaped building and it has a baffling layout inside. Follow the signs and you will find your room. The odd shape of the building makes for some strangely shaped rooms as well. My room was about 20 ft. long and 8 ft. wide. On a previous stay, we had a room that was sort of trapezoid shaped, but very comfortable and with less street noise.

The staff at the front desk were very helpful and spoke excellent English, as did most of the staff. To irritate the Russians who occupied Austria after WWII, the national government made English the required second language in school in 1950. Consequently, you can count on any Austrian being able to speak English, except immigrants, of which there are now more than there used to be in service jobs– hotel maids, bus boys, waiters– but still, Austria is the easiest non-English speaking country for an English speaker to travel in. One radio station broadcast the news in English and had an English language DJ on in the mornings. That’s where I learned there is an Austrian rock band named "Four Guys not All Named Shaun".

The Minichmayer is not to far from the railroad station.

If you are driving, the hotel has a parking lot on the river bank, two floors below the hotel street entrance, but finding the parking lot is a challenge. You must come down the one way side street on the side of the hotel away from the river, traveling toward the hotel and turn down the alley just before the hotel. At the bottom of the hill, negotiate a very sharp left turn and park next to the hotel building in the designated spaces.
Steyr’s street system is baffling. It is a grid imposed on circles. We have never been able to follow a map to The Minichmayer, but somehow we always end up There. Just keep driving around, and sooner or later, you will pass The Minichmayer as it is located on a main road.

The Minichmayer is located close to the scenic old town square. Go out the hotel’s main entrance, turn right, cross the river, and at the foot of the castle wall, turn left. The square is long and wedged shaped, a great after dinner walk.

The hotel has a cozy bar/restaurant in traditional Austrian style. The main restaurant was for many years our favorite in Austria. Even when we stayed at hotels other than the Minichmayer while in Steyr, we always ate at the restaurant in the Minichmayer which was furnished in the grand old style and tuxedo clad waiters served classic Austrian food at our window table overlooking he confluence of the rivers Ens and Steyr and the old town. In 2009, it looked to have been dumbed down, being more plainly furnished and with a menu that didn’t much differentiate it from anywhere else, so I went out to eat to see what else was avilible in Steyr.
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Member Rating 3 out of 5 on March 31, 2010

Hotel & Restaurant Minichmayr
Haratzmüllerstraße 1-3
Steyr, Austria A-4400
+43 (7252) 53410

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China Restaurant Krone

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Restaurant | "A break from German/Austria food"

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After a week of German/Austrian food in Bavaria and Austria, I was ready for a change of pace, so I went Chinese on the two nights I stayed in Melk. "Egg Roll" at the China Restaurant Krone was very different from what I was used to in American and Chinese Chinese restaurants. It was something like a large wrap deep fried– think a small calzone– stuffed with cabbage and stuff, mostly cabbage. Not very crunchy in the crust, but a nice flavor and a much larger sized serving than what we are used to in America when we order egg roll. The fried noodle dish was classic Peking style lightly fried noodles with a heavy sauce. Very tasty classical dish, a real escape from German food. Chi...Read More

After a week of German/Austrian food in Bavaria and Austria, I was ready for a change of pace, so I went Chinese on the two nights I stayed in Melk. "Egg Roll" at the China Restaurant Krone was very different from what I was used to in American and Chinese Chinese restaurants. It was something like a large wrap deep fried– think a small calzone– stuffed with cabbage and stuff, mostly cabbage. Not very crunchy in the crust, but a nice flavor and a much larger sized serving than what we are used to in America when we order egg roll.
The fried noodle dish was classic Peking style lightly fried noodles with a heavy sauce. Very tasty classical dish, a real escape from German food.
Chicken with mushrooms and bamboo shoots had lots of bamboo shoots, a few mushrooms and a modest amount of perfectly stir fried chicken pieces.

There is an English menu, which was accurately translated as far I could tell. The extensive menu included all the standard Chinese dishes. The menu choices are the same as what you get at any run of the mill Chinese restaurant in America, although it turned out that the listed dishes were sometimes not at all recognizable from their American Chinese equivalents.

Austrian beer went nicely with the Chinese food, but they didn’t have dark beer.

Food wise, the bottom line is this: if you need a break from the repetitious German-Austrian menu found in middle class restaurants in Bavaria and Austria, the Chinese Restaurant Krone is excellent choice. Is it a great Chinese restaurant? No, but then, most aren’t. It is a competent Chinese restaurant, and if you find yourself in Melk at meal time and have the slightest hankering for Chinese, it fills the bill.

Service mas provided by two waitresses. One spoke English very well, the other enough to get by. Both also spoke German and Chinese, a veritable United Nations, the China Restaurant Krone.

One dinner (each dinner was two courses plus beer) was 15 Euros, the other was 18 Euros.

There are at least three small dinning rooms that make up the restaurant Krone.
The decor in the three small dining rooms was typical of many American Chinese restaurants– fake Chinese lantern lights hanging from the ceiling and a few Chinese paintings on the wall. The first room, where you enter, had, like the others, modest Chinese trappings, but it was a little odd in appearance because the ceiling was roofed by a Gothic arch, indicative of the age of this ancient building.

An odd experience concerned the four people sitting at the next table. They were Chinese, dressed like Americans, who spoke to the waitress in Chinese and German (I used English and German). Dad wore blue jeans, a sweat shirt with the name of same American University on it, and a baseball cap. He was talking, there in Austria, on the cell phone to somebody in Chinese– globalization in the middle of old Austria.

China Restaurant Krone is at the corner of the highway that runs along the Danube and the short street connecting the highway to Melk’s main street and town square, at Kremser Straße 7. The main street, Hauptstrasse, is a pedestrian zone. The end of Hauptstrasse farthest away from the west wall of the Benedictine Abbey at Melk, the part of the street nearest the Abbey church, ends in the closest thing Melk has to town square. Linser Str. branches off to the left, appearing to be the continuation of Hauptstr. The larger street to the right is Kremser Str. The China Restaurant Krone is one short block down the street, which itself is only one short block long. Read Less

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on March 29, 2010

China Restaurant Krone
Kremser Strasse 7
Melk 3390
+43-27-525-3670

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Hotel and Restaurant Wachauerhof

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Hotel | "Reasonable Price, Decent Standard Hotel"

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There are a handful hotels in the little town of Melk which is situated on the banks of the Danube at the base of a cliff crowed by the great Abby of Melk, one Europe’s top sights. Around 975 A.D., the Babenburgs, the first rulers of what would become Austria, established their seat of power in a castle atop the cliff at Melk. They later move to Vienna and eventually lost power to the long ruling Habsburg family. The first abby was built atop the cliff in 985 A.D. The Hotel and Restaurant Wachauerhof is on the main street about two blocks from the pedestrian only town square and well located for driving up to the Abby (go right on the main street, take the second left, follow the ...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on March 26, 2010

Hotel and Restaurant Wachauerhof
Krummnubaum an der Donauuferbahn 43
Marbach an der Donau
+43 (7413) 7035

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How to Visit a Baroque Church

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I shouldn’t have to mention this, but, considering some of the boorish behavior I’ve seen from tourists in Baroque churches, especially from American tourists, it needs to be said: except in some of the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain, these are churches, and should be treated as such. In the former Communist countries, especaily the Czech Republic, many Baroque churches are now museums, no longer religious institutions, but still, behave yourself according to their status. Consider this display of touristic stupidity we witnessed in a church in Austria or Germany. An American family– mom, dad, and kids-- entered the church and boisterously walked down to the alter area where there...Read More

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Other Things to See and Do

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The purpose of this trip was to see as many baroque church churches as possible in the time available, with a few detours to some other worthwhile sights. This review discusses the other sights visited. Rattenburg is an ancient town on the banks of the Inn. It’s early wealth was based on mining, which collapsed in the 17th Century. Consequently, the old town is frozen in time and retains much of its Renaissance flavor, unlike most towns in Austria which are dominated by baroque architecture. I found it worth a short visit– the climb to the castle ruins for the view over the town and the Danube, and a quick walk around the small old central town, mostly a pedestrian mall packed with t...Read More

The purpose of this trip was to see as many baroque church churches as possible in the time available, with a few detours to some other worthwhile sights. This review discusses the other sights visited.

Rattenburg is an ancient town on the banks of the Inn. It’s early wealth was based on mining, which collapsed in the 17th Century. Consequently, the old town is frozen in time and retains much of its Renaissance flavor, unlike most towns in Austria which are dominated by baroque architecture. I found it worth a short visit– the climb to the castle ruins for the view over the town and the Danube, and a quick walk around the small old central town, mostly a pedestrian mall packed with tourists.

The detour to Lofer. Lofer was long one of our favorite spots in Europe. Unfortunately, by 2009, Lofer had been discovered and greatly expanded as a ski resort, pretty much burying the once quaint village in a sea of condos. If you know Lofer from the old days, don’t go back. Let it live in memory. If you have never been to Lofer, it is still probably worth a visit.
Luckily, the discount clothing store still stood on the town square. This store sells traditional Austrian garb at remarkable prices– Geiger jackets at 1/3 to ½ what you would pay in the USA.
Although Lofer was a bit of a disappointment, the trip to and from was a worthwhile scenic drive. From Rattenburg (above), the expressway quickly brought me to Worgl where I turned off on the road to St Johan in Tirol, a scenic run through the valley at the foot of the mighty Wilder Kaiser. I took a short side trip to the Zoll, and found it to be a veery attractive little Alpine Village (with a nice little baroque church as well). Highly recommended.
From Lofer, I headed north to Bad Reichenhall– an attractive spa resort– and then toward Salzburg on the expressway. As we had visited both several times in the past, no stopping this trip, but both merit a visit by the uninitiated. Back on the expressway, I went south to the turn off for Abtenau. I planned to stay the night in this attractive resort village, but getting there sooner than expected, I took a short walk around the center of town and pushed on to the Gosausee for the night.
The road from the expressway to Bad Ischl is a very scenic drive, not especssily spectacular, but nevertheless, one of the most pleasant in the Alps. The side trip to the Gosausee offers spectacular views of the Dachstein and the Gosau Wall. The view of the Gosausee in the late afternoon is one of the greatest mountain sights anywhere. In no particular order, my list of the top five sights in Europe is Rome, Prague, the palace at Versailles, the Abby a Melk, and the Gosausee. Don’t miss it.
The road ends at the Gosausee, so the next morning, back to the Abtenau -Bad Ischl road to the junction with the Bad Ischl to Bad Aussee road and and then south to Admont, for a look at the famous baroque Abby Library. This too is a scenic mountain drive.
Yet another pleasant drive through the Alps down the Enns valley from Admont brought me to the wonderful old city of Steyr. Set at confluence of the Rivers Steyr and Enns, Steyr’s baroque old town is well preserved, especailly the grand town square, where the old Gothic town hall is now a bank that lets you visit the Gothic council chamber on the second floor (first floor European).
As usual, I got lost trying to drive into Steyr old town. As this had happened four times before, no panic, for I knew that if I just kept driving around, I would eventually come upon the Hotel Minichmayr, and eventually I did. The Minichmayr is one block from the town square, and easy to get to if you know the way. If you don’t know the way out, the desk gives easy directions for leaving town, unless you want to the way I did, toward Kremsmunster.
After visiting the marvelous collection of baroque churches between Steyr and Linz, I headed for Melk for the night, first on the expressway, and then by the scenic road that runs along the north shore of the Danube. I got very lost in the town of Ybbs and eventually stopped for help at a bicycle shop where the folks were most kind and helpful.
Afer a second night in Melk, I started back toward Munich airport. I crossed the Danube at Melk to the scenic north shore road, went up to Maria Taferl, and then to the Mauthausan concentration camp (entrance fee, 1 Euro), one of Hitler’s death camps. Mauthausan’s prisoner population consisted largely of Jews and captured Russian soldiers. None of the Russians survived. Some Jews did. What remains at Mauthausan are some barracks, both for the Nazi guards and Jews, the gas chamber, the crematorium, the prison wall, the quarry, and the Stairway of Death.
The Stairway of Death was Mauthausan’s principle killing machine. Prisoner’s were fed a starvation diet, forced to work in the stone quarry at the bottom of the cliff all day, then climb the stairway about 200 feet straight up back to the prison on top the cliff. When the physical exertion wasn’t killing prisoners fast enough, the Nazi guards threw them off a rock at the top of the cliff that offered a clear fall to the bottom of the quarry.
From Mauthausan, I headed north to Freistadt, an attractive ancient town with a well preserved old city center surrounded by the old moat and city wall.
Note: Freistadt is on the road to Cesky Krumlov, one of the top sights in the Czech Republic. If you ever find yourself in the Danube Valley in the vicinity of Linz, it is a must do day trip to visit Freistadt and Cesky Krumlov, traveling at least one way via the Vlatavatal (Moldau River Valley).
According to Plate Tectonics, the Alps were created by the North Africa Plate moving northward and colliding with the European Plate. This massive collision pushed a pile of rocks up in the air, forming the Alps, but the jolt carried even further north, creating the pre-Alps as well, an area of gently rolling wrinkles in the Earth’s surface where There was enough force to crumple the surface but not enough to form mountains. One such example is the area in Austria called the Muhlviertel, the landscape from Passau, Germany to somewhere east of Freistadt. The Muhlviertel is noted for its pleasant rolling hills of green fields and forests, and so it is, a pleasant, though not spectacular drive between Linz and the Czech border.
My next destination was Scharding. There are two routes from Freistadt to Sharding, head straight west, or return to the expressway at Linz. Considering the time, I decided to go to Scharding via Linz and revisit the wonderful baroque church at Wilhering. Having visited Linz 2-3 times before, I drove straight through to Wilhering and then to Scharding, home to one of Austria’s classic baroque church town squares with its gaily painted pastel buildings.
Linz is a pretty mediocre sight by Austrian standards. The top sights include a very good Gothic cathedral near the large baroque town square, a couple modest baroque churches, and the Hitler buildings, nondescript architecture of some historical interest. Hitler was born in Linz and he got it in his head to rebuild the city in the massive but dull architectural style he favored. Only two buildings were ever completed, but they mark one of the central points of the city in Hitler’s fantasy– the entrance way from the Danube to great town square. The best view of Hitler’s concept is from the bridge crossing the Danube.
In the immortal words of Dave Barry, I’m not making this up. Just north of St. Florian, I drove through the town of Windpassing.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on February 6, 2010

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A Bounty of Beautiful Baroque

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This two week road trip was divided into three parts, Baroque churches of Bavaria, a visit to the Austrian Alps, and the main event, a week looking at Austrian Baroque churches. An art museum is a collection of works of art. A Baroque is a museum sized single work of art. Rembrandt’s "The Night Watch" covers about 40 sq. feet. The artistic triumph that is the interior of the Abbey Church at Melk covers roughly 2,000,000 sq ft.– a single work of art bigger that 40 football fields. It took hundreds of artisans decades to build one of the great Baroque , and the most important of these was the creator of the church, the architect who designed the grand plan. Hired help like Michelange...Read More

This two week road trip was divided into three parts, Baroque churches of Bavaria, a visit to the Austrian Alps, and the main event, a week looking at Austrian Baroque churches.

An art museum is a collection of works of art. A Baroque is a museum sized single work of art. Rembrandt’s "The Night Watch" covers about 40 sq. feet. The artistic triumph that is the interior of the Abbey Church at Melk covers roughly 2,000,000 sq ft.– a single work of art bigger that 40 football fields. It took hundreds of artisans decades to build one of the great Baroque , and the most important of these was the creator of the church, the architect who designed the grand plan. Hired help like Michelangelo, Rubens, Titian, and Rottmayr then came to do the frescos. Noted sculptures crafted the statuary. Famed stucco workers did the stucco work, and master masons or carpenters built the marble columns– Baroque were also an exercise in one-upsmanship, to see which parish could lavish the most money on their church. The most expensive way to build was to craft faux marble columns of painted wood.
The genius of the great Baroque architects was their ability to unite all this pomp and glitter into a harmonious whole. A great example of this is the Abbey Church at Wilhering whose interior is a riot of paintings, statues, stucco, gold leaf, and doodads that, deifying logic, all hang together as a single integrated work, just as the eight watchmen hang together in The Night Watch.
The triumbrate of great Austrian Baroque architects includes Prandtauer, the Fischer von Ehrlacks (father and son) who worked in and around Vienna, and Prunner. Prunner’s masterpiece is the Walifartskirche Stadl-Paura at Pfarr, just outside Lambeck (where the abbey church in the center of town deserves a look).

The best of Austrian Baroque: The Abby church at Melk; Wilhering Abbey; Maria Taferl (but be sure to visit it before going a half hour down the road to Melk); Stadl-Paura (near Lambach and not far from the town of Windbreaking); the Admont Abby Library; and Garsten (near Steyr at the prison).
Maria Taferl is one of the masterpieces by the great Baroque architect, Jakob Prandtauer. Maria Taferl suffers from only one problem– it is a mere 30 minute drive from Prandtauer’s greatest work, the awesome Abbey at Melk. Any sight you see after Melk is going to be second rate, so, be sure to visit Maria Taferl first. I stopped at Maria Taferl on my way to Melk and was wowed by the interior of the church. Two days later, I stopped there again afer two visits to Melk and what had been a spectacular sight now seemed mundane. Maria Taferl is truly a masterpiece, but it needs to seen at its best, which is before you visit Melk. A Pilgrimage Church, Maria Taferl is set atop a cliff high above the Danube. In front of the impressive facade, the terrace gives a fine distant view of the Alps across the Danube if the weather happens to be good.
Jakob Prandtauer’s Abby Church at Melk is the crown jewel of the Baroque, and the abbey building itself, set on cliff high above the Danube, is not minor sight in itself. Be sure to visit the town of Melk at the bottom of the cliff to see the abbey towering above. The wall of the abbey parallel to Melk’s main street is 1,072 ft. long.
The best look at the church interior requires the $15 tour of the principle rooms of the Abby and a boring religious museum. The last time we took the tour, my wife claims I spent 90 minutes in the church. I think it was 45, but in either case, it was rush visit. This is whole art museum packed into one room 170 ft. long and 213 ft. high at the dome. A free peak can be had by walking past the entrance for the tour and going in the second or third door on the right of the passage which bings you into one of the side alters near the main alter where a glass barrier prevents you from getting into the main part of the church. Nevertheless, the Abby ot Melk is one Europe’s top sights and is a must see for anyone visiting Europe.
BTW: at 10:00am on a Sunday morning in mid-September, 30 of tthe 32 bus parking spots in the parking lot were occupied.
The one church that almost rivals Melk is the Rococo extravagance at Wilhering, just outside Linz. Rococo is Baroque decoration carried to the extreme. The genius of Wilhering is that the desinerens and artists responsible managed to overload the place with decorations that nevertheless form a harmonious whole– when you see it, you think this is impossible, but look for a while and somehow it all fits while common sense tells you it can’t. This is a remarkable place, and surprisingly lightly visited.

Honorable mention: St Florian; Gotweg, Hertzogenburg; Stams; Volders` Lambach; Kremsmunster; St Johann Im Tirol; Seitenstetten; Frauenberg
Stams, Kremsmunster, and Hertzogenburg are full time working abbes and only allow visitors into the church on guided tours (fee). Hours can be limited. Stams, for example, is only open to visitors for two hours Saturday morning and two hours Saturday afternoon.
After visiting St Florian’s Abbey Church, I went downstairs to the crypt where 3.000 skulls are stacked in shallow caves under the church alter. The composer Anton Bruckner was the church organist here and he is buried in the crypt in the lone sarcophagus standing in front of the caves of the skulls.
The grand ochre b* church of Frauenburg Abby crows a hill a few miles west of Admont. This is a working Abby, not to often visited by tourists. A mnok praying in the pews was the only onter person in teh church.

Others: Not all Baroque churches are listed in the popular guide books, only the most impressive ones, which tend to be the larger churches. There are also a lot of small, but still appealing Baroque churches. I spent some time every day taking pot luck and stopping to take a look at what appeared to be a Baroque church from the exterior as seen when driving by. I discovered the following results from looking without knowing what I was getting into. Some turned out to be small scale Baroque gems, others not so much. Some were locked, half or more had open doors. Some were only Baroque on the exterior, which led me to try some little churches that did not look Baroque but were in an area with lofts of Baroque, and some of them turned out to have Baroque interiors. This is time consuming way to sightsee, butt fun to do from time to time. For example, it took over an hour to go 22 miles from my mountain side hotel overlooking Innsbruck to Volders, but there are a lot of attractive little Baroque churches along he road (from Patsch to Volders).
From time to time exploring blind leads the traveler to some off the beaten path gems, such as the charming little town of Zoll on Rt 178 between Worgl and St Johann Im Tirol, set att the foot of the imposing Wilder Kaiser. The village church, attractively set on top of a little hill in the center of town only added to the charm of the overall setting. Had it been later in the day, I would have stayed there for the night.

Most of these Baroque are located more or less in the Danube Valley where the expressway paralleling the river allows for fast travel. Many of these sights can be reached by train and all by bus, but travel by car is far het fastest and most convenient. We generally found on our European trips that renting a car is less expensive for two people traveling together than a Eurail Pass.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on February 6, 2010

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A Bounty of Beautiful Baroque

Hotel Restaurant Mader

Hotel & Restaurant Minichmayr

China Restaurant Krone

Hotel and Restaurant Wachauerhof

How to Visit a Baroque Church

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A Bounty of Beautiful Baroque

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