Curated Itinerary
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps: a Lakeshore Route
Around the Alps through the pile-dwelling listing: Lake Constance, the Federsee, Neuchâtel and Biel, the Jura lakes, the Ljubljana Marshes and Austria’s Carinthian waters.
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From Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen to Mondsee (lake), in the order we curated them.
➤ Turn on the navigator in Google MapsIt opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
This itinerary circles the Alps through the UNESCO listing “Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps” (2011): 111 submerged or buried stilt-house villages across six countries. Our route takes nine stops in five countries — Lake Constance and the Federsee in Germany, the Neuchâtel and Biel lakes in Switzerland, Chalain and Clairvaux in the French Jura, the Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia, and the Carinthian and Salzkammergut lakes in Austria.
Because waterlogged wood survives only while buried, the villages themselves are invisible; the route therefore alternates landscapes with the museums that interpret them, from the reconstructed pier-village of Unteruhldingen to the Laténium’s lake-floor treasury. What links the stops is preservation: the mud kept the perishable side of prehistory — wheels, nets, bread — that everywhere else is gone.
Plan a week for the western arc and a long weekend for the east. Pair every lake with its museum, and bring swimming things: these are working holiday lakes with a Bronze Age underneath.
Read the full story of this route in the CHO Magazine →
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A word from your host
The monuments are underwater, so let the museums do the storytelling and the lakes do the rest. Unteruhldingen at opening time, before the crowds, is the closest you will get to standing in 1000 BCE.
Getting around
Regional trains and short drives link the whole western arc from Lake Constance to the Jura; Ljubljana and Carinthia make a separate loop. Every stop is a resort lake — accommodation is easy outside August.
Step by step
Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen
An open-air museum on Lake Constance featuring reconstructed stilt houses that reveal how Neolithic and Bronze Age communities lived on the water's edge.
Federsee
A 33 km² moorland lake in Upper Swabia, Federsee is one of Southern Germany's most important bird sanctuaries and archaeological sites, accessible via…
Laténium
An archaeology museum and open-air park in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, featuring the Bevaix boat and reconstructed Iron Age structures built atop three…
Lake Biel
Lake Biel is one of three major lakes in Switzerland's Jura region, straddling the boundary between German and French-speaking communities.
Lac de Chalain
A glacial lake in France's Jura preserves exceptional prehistoric pile-dwelling settlements from 4000–750 BC, now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Clairvaux-les-Lacs
A Jura commune in eastern France formed in 1959 through the merger with Soyria, characterized by its lakes and rural Jurassien heritage.
Ljubljana Marsh
Slovenia's largest wetland, the Ljubljana Marsh covers 163 square kilometres south of the capital, shaped by centuries of human settlement within…
Keutschacher See
An Alpine lake in Carinthia housing a Neolithic stilt settlement discovered in 1864, representing significant prehistoric evidence of Alpine habitation.
Mondsee (lake)
An Alpine lake in Austria's Salzkammergut, Mondsee holds submerged Neolithic pile dwellings discovered in 1864—rare evidence of Europe's earliest settlements.
Download for tour navigation
🔒 The walk and the notes are open to everyone on this page. The files to take with you — the stop list as a PDF, and the GPX and KML tracks for your phone — come with a CHO account, and the free one includes them.
Walk it with the navigator on
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.