Tyrol & Vorarlberg

The valleys were settled long before any state existed here, as the 1991 discovery of Ötzi — a man who died around 3,300 BC high on the Ötztal ridge at the Italian border — made plain. Celtic and Raetic peoples held the mountains until Rome absorbed them in 15 BC and later built roads over the Reschen and the Brenner, two of the main crossings of the Eastern Alps. Roman Brigantium stood where Bregenz stands now.

Alemannic settlers moved into the Lake Constance basin after Rome withdrew, Bavarians into the Inn valley, and the linguistic border between them still runs along the Arlberg. The Counts of Tyrol built up a territory from their castle above Merano, and in 1363 Margarete Maultasch handed it to the Habsburgs. Innsbruck became a Habsburg residence under Maximilian I, who is remembered by the gilded loggia of the Goldenes Dachl and by the black bronze statues of ancestors, relatives and heroes around his empty tomb. Tyrol kept a distinctive constitution in which peasants carried arms and sat in the diet, and the militia tradition it created produced the rising of 1809, when the innkeeper Andreas Hofer led Tyrolean riflemen against Bavarian and French rule and won at Bergisel before being caught and shot.

Vorarlberg's lands were acquired piecemeal by the Habsburgs and only became a separate province in 1861, and after 1918 a large majority there voted to join Switzerland — a union that Vienna, the Allies and many Swiss opposed. The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain cut Tyrol apart, giving South Tyrol and Trentino to Italy and leaving East Tyrol an exclave cut off from North Tyrol; today the state forms a cross-border Euroregion with South Tyrol and Trentino. Vorarlberg industrialised early, its textile and embroidery works drawing in workers from elsewhere by the 19th century, while mass tourism later transformed the Tyrolean valleys.

The Arlberg separates two peoples who both call themselves Austrian. Tyroleans speak Bavarian dialects; Vorarlbergers speak Alemannic, closer to Swiss German and famously hard for other Austrians to follow, and they look west to Switzerland and the Rhine valley as much as east to Vienna. Both are strongly Catholic, with roadside shrines, Corpus Christi processions and church towers that still set the rhythm of a village.

Folk custom is lived rather than staged. Herds come down from the high pastures in late September or early October in the Almabtrieb, the lead cow crowned with flowers and mirrors; masked figures run through villages on the Krampus nights of early December and in the Perchten runs after Christmas; and the masked carnival processions of Imst, Nassereith and Telfs are held only every few years, Imst's Schemenlaufen being on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Schützen companies parade in historic uniform, brass bands play at every occasion, and Kitzbühel's Hahnenkamm weekend in January is as much a national event as a race.

The region is also unusually confident about design. Vorarlberg has built a reputation for contemporary architecture in glass and local wood, from village museums and bus shelters in the Bregenzerwald to the glass-clad Kunsthaus Bregenz, and it sits comfortably beside the old craft economy of joinery, embroidery in Lustenau, glass at Rattenberg and the Swarovski works at Wattens.

Roughly 760,000 people live in Tyrol and 400,000 in Vorarlberg. Innsbruck, with about 130,000 residents and a large university, is the only city of any size in Tyrol; Kufstein, Schwaz, Wörgl, Hall, Telfs and Lienz in East Tyrol are smaller towns. Vorarlberg's population is packed into the Rhine valley strip of Bregenz, Dornbirn and Feldkirch, a near-continuous urban ribbon of around 300,000 people that is the most densely settled region of Austria after Vienna; Bludenz lies further up the Ill.

Tourism dominates Tyrol: the state records more overnight stays than any other in Austria, and in resorts like Ischgl or Sölden winter visitors far outnumber the residents. Vorarlberg's economy is industrial — lighting, packaging, engineering, cable cars and textiles — and many residents commute across the border to jobs in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The working day starts early and ends early; shops shut on Sundays, and in the ski season two working shifts revolve around the lifts. The pressures under discussion are familiar: housing costs driven up by holiday apartments, water and energy demand from snowmaking, lorry traffic on the Brenner corridor, and whether glacier resorts can plan for a warmer century.

Western cooking leans on dairy, flour and smoked meat. Käsespätzle — soft egg noodles layered with grated cheese and fried onions — is an everyday dish, and Tyrol adds Tiroler Gröstl, a pan of fried potatoes, onion and leftover beef or pork with an egg on top, and Speckknödel, bread dumplings studded with cured bacon. Schlutzkrapfen, half-moon pasta filled with anything from potato or meat to spinach and curd, come from the old Tyrolean kitchen, and Tiroler Speck, cured and smoked pork, has protected geographical indication status.

Cheese is the serious product. The Bregenzerwald runs a Käsestrasse of dairies making Bergkäse, matured for three months to two years, alongside the sharp, semi-hard Räßkäse and the sour-milk Sura Kees of the Montafon valley. Vorarlberg's Riebel, maize and wheat semolina cooked in milk to a firm mash, was traditionally eaten at breakfast, and parts of East Tyrol fill their Schlutzkrapfen with potato and call them Schlipfkrapfen.

Sweets are simple and filling: Kaiserschmarrn eaten at midday in a hut and Apfelradln, apple rings fried in batter, while the Zillertal's own Krapfen are savoury, fried rye pastries filled with potato and grey cheese. Beer outweighs wine — Zillertal Bier, Fohrenburger from Bludenz, Starkenberger at Tarrenz — and the spirit is clear fruit schnapps.

Innsbruck compresses a lot into a small centre: the Goldenes Dachl, the Maria-Theresien-Strasse under the Nordkette, the Hofburg and the Hofkirche with Maximilian's bronzes, Ambras Castle, the Bergisel jump with Zaha Hadid's tower, and the Hungerburg funicular and cable cars that climb from the old town to about 2,300 metres. East along the Inn are Schwaz's silver mine, Hall's medieval salt town, Rattenberg's glassworks and Kufstein's fortress, and beyond them the medieval town and ski slopes of Kitzbühel, between the Hahnenkamm and the Kitzbüheler Horn.

The side valleys carry the high country. The Zillertal runs south into the Zillertal Alps, a granite-gneiss range of 3,000-metre peaks along the Italian border, with the Berliner Höhenweg long-distance trail and, at the head of the Tux side valley, the Hintertux glacier. The Ötztal climbs past the Stuibenfall waterfall and Sölden to Obergurgl, Austria's highest parish, with the Timmelsjoch pass into Italy and the ridge where Ötzi was found; the neighbouring Stubai and Pitztal valleys hold more glacier terrain. The Karwendel to the north is a vast protected limestone range above Seefeld, and East Tyrol reaches into Hohe Tauern National Park below the Grossglockner, where the Umbal waterfalls lie, and also takes in the Lienz Dolomites of the Gailtal Alps.

Vorarlberg begins at Bregenz on Lake Constance, where the Seebühne stages opera over the water, the Kunsthaus shows contemporary art and the Pfänder cable car looks across three countries. Inland lie the Bregenzerwald's timber villages, the Rappenlochschlucht gorge at Dornbirn, Feldkirch's Schattenburg castle, the Silvretta high road above the Montafon, and the Arlberg resorts of Lech, Zürs and St Anton.