| Hallstatt, Upper Austria is a lakeside village located at the south-western shore of the Hallstätter See in the austrian Salzkammergut region, southeast of Salzburg . The town lies on the national road linking Salzburg and Graz. Salt was a valuable resource, so the region was historically very wealthy. The village also gave its name to the early Iron Age Hallstatt Culture and is a World Heritage Site for Cultural Heritage. Hallstatt is a popular tourist attraction owing to its small-town appeal and can be toured on foot in ten minutes. The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC (European Early Iron Age), developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC (Late Bronze Age) and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture. By the 6th century BC, the Halstatt culture extended for some 1000 km, from the Champagne-Ardenne in the west, through the Upper Rhine and the upper Danube, as far as the Vienna Basin and the Danubian Lowland in the east, from the Main, Bohemia and the Little Carpathians in the north, to the Swiss plateau, the Salzkammergut and to Lower Styria. The culture is commonly linked to Proto-Celtic and Celtic populations in its western zone and with (pre-)Illyrians in its eastern zone. This secluded and utterly captivating landscape counts as one of the first places of human settlement due to the rich sources of natural salt, which have been mined for thousands of years. It is ... |
