Innsbruck
Sprawling beneath the mountain ridge of the Nordkette, Innsbruck is the only major urban centre in Austria with an array of high Alps on its own doorstep. If you want to visit museums in the morning, walk up mountains in the afternoon and bar-hop well into the early hours, you'd be hard pushed to find a more convenient place in which to do it. With the Tyrol's largest concentration of mountain resorts in such close proximity, skiing is obviously big news here – and hosting the winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976 provided the city with a wealth of sporting and tourist facilities to call its own. But for those who just want a taste of history, Innsbruck's compact centre – a classic Austrian hybrid of the Gothic and Baroque – invites aimless strolling. It's also a thriving commercial centre that depends on more than just tourism for its living, and has a down-to-earth, unpretentious air quite different to that of western Austria's other main urban centre, self-possessed Salzburg. Innsbruck is the nation's third biggest university city after Vienna and Graz, its sizeable student population helping to support a range of cultural and nightlife options wide enough to suit most tastes.
It's an amazingly easy city to explore, with many of its tourist attractions only a few paces apart, and a great deal of sightseeing can be achieved in the space of a day or two. However it's also a good base from which to explore the Tyrol as a whole, with regular trains whizzing you along the Inn valley to the province's main out-of-town attractions.
The City
Most of what you will want to see in Innsbruck is confined to the central precincts of the Altstadt. A small area of sturdy medieval houses, many attractively painted in pastel colours and supported by sloping earthquake buttresses, it's bounded by the River Inn and the Graben, a street following the course of the moat that once surrounded the town's medieval core. Leading up to the Altstadt from the south, Innsbruck's main artery is the Maria-Theresien-Strasse, famed for its view north towards the great rock wall of the Nordkette range. Outside this downtown area there's not a great deal to see, save for the former imperial arsenal or Zeughaus, in an anonymous area of apartment blocks and offices just east of the centre, and a cluster of Baroque churches and minor museums in the suburb of Wilten to the south.
Eating, drinking and entertainment
Innsbruck's Altstadt is crowded with establishments offering all manner of food and drink. A constant flow of tourists ensures that not all of them are cheap, but it's extremely rare to be fobbed off with nondescript food or indifferent service wherever you are in town.
There's no shortage of daytime snack food, with Würstelstands on both Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse and Maria-Theresien-Strasse. The handy Magic Pizza, on the corner of Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse and Kiebachgasse, doles out inexpensive pizza slices. A little further afield, Prendi Pizza, Viaduktbogen 5, and the Ali Kebab House, Mariahilferstrasse 12, are popular sources for quick, takeaway nosh.
For daytime drinking, Innsbruck has a couple of classic coffeehouses that compare favourably with anything Vienna has to offer. A wide range of bars are scattered throughout the centre, and the Viaduktbogen – a line of railway arches ten minutes' walk east of the Altstadt – is home to a string of varied night-time venues. Central bars are usually open until around 2am, although several go on for a couple of hours longer. Most drinking establishments serve snacks or substantial main meals, day and night.
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