Austria

Austria is a country in the middle of Europe.

It has no sea. Big mountains called the Alps cover a lot of it. A long river called the Danube flows past its towns. The capital city is Vienna.

Austria is in central Europe, and it is landlocked: it has no coast at all. Eight countries share its borders, from Germany and the Czech Republic in the north to Italy and Slovenia in the south. It stretches about 580 kilometers from east to west.

Mountains and forests give Austria its look. The Alps run through most of the country, while the Danube River winds across the northeast. About 9.2 million people live in Austria, and nearly all of them speak German. The capital, Vienna, lies where the Danube leaves the mountains and reaches the flatter plains.

Austria is a largely mountainous, landlocked country of south-central Europe, bordered by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany. It extends roughly 580 km from east to west and covers about 83,879 square kilometers. Britannica notes that its position, astride the Danube trade route between east and west and the Alpine passes between north and south, has tied it into many political and economic systems.

Statistics Austria counted 9,215,956 residents on 1 January 2026 (final result), an increase of only 0.2 percent in 2025; in its preliminary count, 20.5 percent held a foreign citizenship. The country is made up of nine federal provinces, from Vorarlberg in the west to Burgenland and Vienna in the east, and it has been a member of the European Union since January 1995.

Vienna is the biggest city in Austria.

It has palaces, gardens and a grand opera house. Salzburg is an old city with beautiful buildings. The famous music maker Mozart came from there.

Vienna is Austria's capital, home to about 2 million people. It grew from old Celtic and Roman settlements into a great city of palaces, and its historic center is a World Heritage Site. The Belvedere, begun in 1714, is a Baroque palace and garden ensemble. The Vienna State Opera opened in 1869.

At Schönbrunn, a palace where Austria's emperors lived, the gardens held a zoo that opened in 1752. Salzburg kept its old streets from the Middle Ages to the 1800s. UNESCO calls the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart its most famous son.

Vienna had 2,040,914 residents on 1 January 2026 (final result) and accounted for about two-thirds of Austria's population growth in 2025. UNESCO describes its historic center, inscribed in 2001, as having grown from Celtic and Roman settlements into a medieval and Baroque city and the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with Baroque palaces such as the Belvedere and the late-19th-century Ringstrasse; since July 2017 it has also been on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn, the residence of the Habsburg emperors from the 18th century to 1918, were designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and Nicolaus Pacassi; the gardens held what UNESCO calls the world's first zoo, in 1752.

Salzburg, inscribed in 1996, preserves an urban fabric built from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, when it was a city-state ruled by a prince-archbishop. Italian architects Vincenzo Scamozzi and Santini Solari gave its center much of its Baroque appearance.

Austria has very high mountains.

The tallest one is the Grossglockner. Rivers of ice called glaciers sit high up. There are many lakes. Forests cover a lot of the land.

The Alps are the backbone of Austria. The highest peak, the Grossglockner, is 3,798 meters tall. Below it lies the Pasterze, the largest glacier in the Eastern Alps, a slow river of ice about 4 kilometers long. From 2006 to 2016 it shrank by about 40 meters a year.

Long ago, during the ice ages, glaciers scooped out many of Austria's mountain lakes. Forests cover about two-fifths of the country, and spruce is the main tree. In the mountains above 3,000 meters, the snow in January can be about 3 meters deep. Nearly all of Austria's rivers flow into the Danube.

The Austrian Alps consist of northern and southern limestone ranges separated by a softer central range of crystalline rock. The Grossglockner (3,798 m) rises in the Hohe Tauern, home to the Hohe Tauern National Park: at 1,856 square kilometers, the largest national park in the Alps, with 332 glaciers covering about 6 percent of its area. The Pasterze, at the foot of the Grossglockner, covers an estimated 16 square kilometers with a 4 km tongue, the largest glacier of the Eastern Alps; its length has been measured every year since 1879, and from 2006 to 2016 the tongue retreated by about 40 m a year.

The prevailing winds come from the west, so the west has an Atlantic climate with about 1,000 mm of rain a year and the east is drier and more continental. In the eastern lowlands the median temperature runs from about −1 °C in January to 20 °C in July. Forests cover some two-fifths of the land, dominated by spruce, and nearly all of Austria drains into the Danube system.

Alpine ibex climb steep rocks.

They have big curved horns. Marmots live in holes under mountain meadows. They whistle to warn each other. Golden eagles fly high above.

In the Hohe Tauern National Park, alpine ibex climb steep cliffs. Their hooves work like climbing shoes, with soft pads and hard edges, and a male's horns can grow up to one meter long. About 1,100 ibex live in the park today, after they were brought back in the 1960s.

Marmots live in family burrows on high meadows. They whistle to warn each other: many whistles for danger on the ground, one whistle for danger from the air, such as an eagle. About 40 pairs of golden eagles nest in the park. Elsewhere in Austria live deer, owls, storks and swans.

The Hohe Tauern National Park says it holds around half of all the mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian species recorded in Austria. An estimated 1,100 alpine ibex live there following a reintroduction in the 1960s; males can exceed 90 kg, with backward-curving horns up to a meter long. Bearded vultures, with wingspans of up to 2.9 m, have been reintroduced since 1986 in the Rauris Kruml valley, and about 40 breeding pairs of golden eagles keep their population stable. Marmots live in family burrows between 1,400 and 2,700 m and spend the winter asleep; the chamois is the large mammal seen most often.

Across the country, Britannica lists the brown bear, eagles, buzzards, falcons, owls, cranes, swans and storks among the wild animals, many of them protected by conservation laws, and trout, grayling, pike, perch and carp in the rivers.

About 9 million people live in Austria.

Most people speak German. Children go to school from age 6. Many people play music in bands or sing in choirs. A famous meal is a thin, breaded schnitzel.

About 9.2 million people live in Austria, and about one in four lives in and around Vienna. Nearly everyone speaks German, but in different dialects: Bavarian in most of the country and an Alemannic dialect, close to Swiss German, in the far west. Croatian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Turkish are spoken too.

Children must go to school from age 6 to 15. Music is part of everyday life: many people play in bands, sing in choirs or make music at home. Meeting friends in cafés is common. Wiener schnitzel is thin veal, breaded and fried, often served with lemon, salad and potatoes.

About one-fourth of Austria's population lives in the Vienna urban agglomeration; Graz is the second-largest city. Nearly everyone speaks German. About seven million people speak the Bavarian (Austro-Bavarian) dialect, while Vorarlberg and parts of western Tirol speak Alemannic; Croatian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Turkish are spoken by minority groups, the Croats and Hungarians mainly in Burgenland and the Slovenes mainly in Kärnten. About three-fourths of people are Christian, mostly Roman Catholic; Islam has a smaller following, and more than one-tenth of the population is nonreligious.

School is compulsory from 6 to 15, and the University of Vienna was founded in 1365. Vienna is linked with Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Mahler, and with the waltz and operetta of Johann Strauss the Younger; the Salzburg Festival was founded in 1920. Britannica notes that many Austrians play in bands or sing in choirs and that cafés are part of everyday life. Wiener schnitzel, a name protected by law for breaded, fried veal, is the best-known schnitzel.