Linz audiotours

Linz carries some uncomfortable history. Adolf Hitler grew up here and in his final years dreamed of turning it into the greatest museum city in Europe -- the Fuhrerprojekt would have made Linz the cultural capital of a Nazi empire. The city has confronted rather than suppressed this, and the Documentation Center at the Tabor Manor outside the city offers a sober reckoning. What Linz actually became is something far more interesting: one of the most progressive arts and technology cities in Austria, anchored by Ars Electronica, the international festival of art, technology, and society that has been running since 1979 and whose permanent center on the Danube riverfront is one of the best science-and-art museums in Europe.

The Linz Hauptplatz -- the main square, one of the largest baroque squares in Central Europe -- frames the city's older identity, with the Trinity Column erected in 1723 as a plague memorial at its center.

The Lentos Kunstmuseum, a long glass box of a building on the Danube bank, holds a serious modern Austrian art collection including works by Klimt and Schiele. The Linzer Torte, a lattice-topped tart with redcurrant jam and hazelnuts, is considered the world's oldest named cake recipe, first documented in a 1653 manuscript -- a gentle claim to fame that the city wears more comfortably than some of its other records.