Curated Itinerary

Fertő / Neusiedlersee: the Steppe Lake Cultural Landscape

Curated by Cultural Heritage Online

Around Lake Fertő/Neusiedl in six stops: Rust’s storks, Purbach’s walls, the Fertőrákos quarry, Eszterháza’s Haydn rooms and Nagycenk — 120 flat km, ideally by bicycle.

6stops

75.5km

11h 30mduration

easydifficulty

apr-octbest season

architecturetype

View on full map → ⇓ GPX ⇓ KML

This itinerary circles the Fertő / Neusiedlersee cultural landscape, the steppe lake Austria and Hungary have shared on the World Heritage List since 2001. Six stops ring the water: the lake itself and its reed belt, the wine town of Rust with its storks, walled Purbach, the Roman-to-Baroque quarry of Fertőrákos, Haydn’s palace at Eszterháza, and the Széchenyi seat at Nagycenk.

The route is a circuit because the landscape is one: vineyards, reed harvest and palace avenues arranged around a shallow lake that has always ignored the border running through it — most dramatically in 1989, when the Curtain first opened just beyond its southern shore.

Ride it: 120 flat kilometres of signed cycleway make this the easiest two-day tour on CHO, with a ferry shortcut and wine taverns as waypoints. Time it for spring migration or the September harvest, and give Eszterháza its half day.

Read the full story of this route in the CHO Magazine →

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Before you go

A word from your host

Rent the bike. The lake ring is flat, signed and punctuated by wine taverns exactly where your legs want them. Cross the border both ways in one afternoon just because, for forty years, nobody here could.

Getting around

Vienna is an hour away; the 120-km lakeside cycleway circles the whole property with rental stations in every town and a ferry shortcut across the middle. Drivers manage all six stops in a long day, but the landscape rewards two.