ग्राज़ Audio Tours

Graz is Austria's second largest city and the one that has consistently produced the most architecturally adventurous responses to its own historic fabric. The Altstadt, the old town, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999: a remarkably well-preserved ensemble of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque buildings accumulated over seven centuries when Graz was the capital of Inner Austria and a strategically crucial Habsburg stronghold. Standing on the Schlossberg, the 473-metre hill at the city's centre from which the clock tower has watched the city since 1561, you can see exactly why the Habsburgs wanted it.

The response to all this heritage came in 2003 with the Kunsthaus Graz, a biomorphic blue blob of a contemporary art museum designed by Peter Cook and Colin Fournier and known locally as the Friendly Alien.

It sits directly across the Mur River from the Altstadt in deliberate contrast, a statement that the city was not content to be merely a custodian of its past. Beside it, an artificial floating island in the Mur, the Murinsel designed by Vito Acconci, functions simultaneously as a cafe, amphitheatre, and footbridge, and has been quietly dividing Graz residents since its installation in 2003.