Seewalchen

Heading northwest from Gmunden it's easy to reach the Attersee, whose length of 21 km (13 mi) makes it the largest lake in the Salzkammergut and the second largest in Austria. Here in Seewalchen and other Attersee lake towns you can attend the Attersee Klassik, a music festival held mainly in village churches, from the end of July until end of August. Along the Attersee, between Seewalchen and Steinbach, there are 19 locations that inspired the great Secessionist painter Gustav Klimt. From 1900 until two years before his death in 1918 he often vacationed in this area, and used its landscape motifs in more than 50 of his paintings. From May to September special guided tours (via foot, bus, or ferry) are given by the regional tourist office to show the areas he immortalized along a route running some 45 km (28 mi). Don't fail to stop in at the village's noted Konditorei Rohringer, an excellent pastry shop famous for its cookies.