Visit the Eiffel Tower, look an anaconda in the eye, go on a boat trip or take a trip to the stars.

Klagenfurt am Wörthersee is the capital of the federal state of Carinthia in Austria. With a population of 101,303 (1 January 2020), it is the sixth-largest city in the country. The city is the bishop’s seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt and home to the University of Klagenfurt, the Carinthian University of Applied Sciences and the Gustav Mahler University of Music.

The city of Klagenfurt is in southern Austria, near the border with Slovenia. It is in the lower middle of Austria, almost the same distance from Innsbruck in the west as it is from Vienna in the northeast.

Municipal arrangement

Klagenfurt is a statutory city of Carinthia, and the administrative seat of the district of Klagenfurt-Land, but is a separate district from Klagenfurt-Land. In fact, their licence plates are different (K for the city, KL for the district). Klagenfurt is divided itself into 16 districts:

It is further divided into 25 Katastralgemeinden. They are: Klagenfurt, Blasendorf, Ehrenthal, Goritschitzen, Großbuch, Großponfeld, Gurlitsch I, Hallegg, Hörtendorf, Kleinbuch, Lendorf, Marolla, Nagra, Neudorf, St. Martin bei Klagenfurt, St. Peter am Karlsberg, St. Peter bei Ebenthal, Sankt Peter am Bichl, St. Ruprecht bei Klagenfurt, Stein, Tentschach, Viktring, Waidmannsdorf, Waltendorf, and Welzenegg.

Sights

The Lindworm fountain is one of the most recognisable landmarks of the Klagenfurt city centre.

The Old City, with its central Alter Platz (Old Square) and the Renaissance buildings with their charming arcaded courtyards are a major attraction.

Notable landmarks also include:

• The Lindworm fountain of 1593, with a Hercules added in 1633
• Landhaus, Palace of the Estates, now the seat of the State Assembly.
• the Baroque cathedral, built by the then Protestant Estates of Carinthia
• Viktring Abbey
• Hypo-Arena Football stadium
• Minimundus, the “small world on lake Wörthersee”
• The Kreuzbergl Nature Park, with a viewing tower and observatory
• The small but attractive botanical garden at the foot of Kreuzbergl, with a mining museum attached
• Wörthersee (the warmest of the large Alpine lakes) with Europe’s largest non-sea beach and lido, taking 12,000 bathers on a summer day.
• Maria Loretto peninsula, with its newly renovated stately home, (recently acquired by the city from the Carinithian noble family of the Rosenbergs)
• Tentschach and Hallegg castles.

Culture

There is a civic theatre-cum-opera house with professional companies, a professional symphony orchestra, a state conservatory and concert hall. There are musical societies such as Musikverein (founded in 1826) or Mozartgemeinde, a private experimental theatre company, the State Museum, a modern art museum and the Diocesan museum of religious art; the Artists’ House, two municipal and several private galleries, a planetarium in Europa Park, literary institutions such as the Robert Musil House, and a reputable German-literature competition awarding the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.The Artists’ House, 1913/14, Architect: Franz Baumgartner

Klagenfurt is the home of a number of small but fine publishing houses, and several papers or regional editions are also published here including dailies such as “Kärntner Krone“, “Kärntner Tageszeitung”, “Kleine Zeitung“.

Klagenfurt is a popular vacation spot, with mountains both to the south and north, numerous parks and a series of 23 stately homes and castles on its outskirts. In summer, the city is home to the Altstadtzauber (The Magic of the Old City) festival.

Also located here are the University of Klagenfurt, a campus of the Fachhochschule Kärnten, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, a college of education for primary and secondary teacher training and further education of teachers as well as a college of general further education (VHS) and two institutions of further professional and vocational education (WIFI and BFI).

Among other Austrian educational institutions, there is a Slovene language Gymnasium (established in 1957) and a Slovene language commercial high school. Several Carinthian Slovene cultural and political associations are also based in the city, including the Hermagoras Society, the oldest Slovene publishing house founded in Klagenfurt in 1851.