Wachau

The Wachau is the 36 km stretch of the Danube valley between Melk and Krems. Early in the 20th century an excavation near Willendorf turned up the Venus of Willendorf, an 11.1 cm Palaeolithic figure carved in limestone. Local people began clearing the forest in the Neolithic, and after the Celtic kingdom of Noricum became part of the Roman Empire in 15 BC the Danube formed the frontier, guarded at the lower end of the valley by the fort of Favianis, today's Mautern.

From the 9th century monasteries from Bavaria and Salzburg cultivated the slopes, building vine terraces to make and sell wine, and the name appears as locus Wahowa in 853. In 1089 Margrave Leopold II of Austria gave one of his castles at Melk to Benedictine monks from Lambach, and the present Baroque abbey was built between 1702 and 1736 to designs by Jakob Prandtauer. The towns were laid out in the 11th and 12th centuries, and in the 15th and 16th centuries stone houses replaced wooden ones.

Grüner Veltliner and Riesling are still grown on the steep terraces, and apricot orchards also shape the landscape. The valley, with its towns, monasteries, castles and farmland, was inscribed as a cultural landscape in December 2000.