What to see in the Wachau: day trip ideas and my tip for a Danube boat trip

The Wachau is a valley in Lower Austria, not a town, and I don’t think even a weekend is enough for it. The places I wouldn’t miss are Melk Abbey, Dürnstein, Krems with Göttweig Abbey, Aggstein Castle and a boat trip on the Danube. The valley is best explored by car or by bike, but you can manage with buses and boats too.

Quick factsby Milan Bez Mapy

How long

I had a weekend here, and it wasn’t enough

When to go

In the apricot season in early summer, usually July

Boat trip

About an hour and a half from Krems, where I stayed, to Spitz; tickets at the pier a few minutes before departure

Without a car

Buses run the length of the valley, and with the boats and a bike you can easily do without a car

Melk

I found the abbey park and the Baroque garden more interesting than the abbey itself

Göttweig Abbey

Paul Troger’s fresco above the staircase moves when you walk from side to side beneath it

I wrote this article in 2019. Prices, opening hours and timetables may have changed since then, so check them before you travel.

What is there to see in the Wachau? I recently visited Lower Austria, the Wachau valley and Melk to be precise, and left completely worn out. The area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. There’s so much to see that a weekend in the Wachau wasn’t enough for me. So where should you go?

What to see in the Wachau and when apricot season is

First, a word on where the Wachau is and what it is. The Wachau is a valley in Lower Austria. It isn’t a town, which is what I had originally assumed. The Danube flows right through the middle of it. The whole area is one of the most visited parts of Austria, mainly for its wine and history. Wachau wines are known all over the world, but more on those later. For now, let’s look at what to see in the Wachau.

Tip from Milan You might also like my guides to where to go in Burgenland and what to see in Lower Austria.

When to visit the Wachau: apricot season

I’d definitely recommend visiting the Wachau during the apricot season. Picking starts in mid-July and lasts about two to three weeks. The Wachau is in blossom from late March to mid-April. Apricots are a really big deal here, and you can buy anything that can possibly be made from them. Apricot jam, apricot buns, apricot apricots. Apricot liqueur and schnapps. I’m really not exaggerating. Apart from the apricot season and the jam, the Wachau is packed with places that are genuinely worth a visit. If you like the outdoors and don’t mind a bit of a climb on the hills above the Danube, you’ll enjoy the Wachau. Here’s what I managed to fit into one weekend.

What to see in the Wachau and where to go on a day trip in Lower Austria

• The ruins of Aggstein Castle
• The town of Melk and its abbey
• The town of Spitz, the ruins of Hinterhaus Castle and the Red Gate
• The town of Dürnstein and its abbey
• Krems an der Donau
• Göttweig Abbey
• Grafenegg Castle
• EXTRA: a boat trip on the Danube

Wachau World Heritage Trail: a hiking route past the UNESCO sites

Tip from Milan If you want to see all the UNESCO sites in the Wachau, the Wachau World Heritage Trail is worth a look. The trail is a 180 km hiking route through the Danube valley and its wine country. It passes through 13 municipalities in the Wachau valley, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It’s split into 14 stages, and you can walk it in either direction.

You can find tours and boat trips in the Wachau here:

Things to do in the Wachau

Aggstein Castle in the Wachau

On the eastern stretch of the Danube, between Spitz and Melk, stand the ruins of Aggstein Castle. They’re considered one of the most remarkable stops in the whole UNESCO-listed Wachau. The ruins are about 900 years old, and nobody knows who built the castle. Today Aggstein is privately owned and hosts mainly guided tours, weddings and other events. At its peak, up to 60 people lived here, with 12 guards to watch over them. They shared the place with horses and pigs. The Aggstein ruins are open to the public from mid-March to October, and in November there’s a special Christmas market.

Legend has it that Hadmar III von Kuenring, one of the owners, stretched a long chain across the Danube from one bank to the other. He used it to sink passing ships and plunder them. There’s a game for children all over the castle grounds. At the entrance they get a magic stone that gives them hints and clues in German, and with its help they free the ghosts from the castle.

Melk Abbey and a walk around the town

Melk is a typical Austrian town and looks exactly the way your average Slovak pictures a small Austrian town: flowers everywhere, ice cream and good restaurants. A huge Baroque abbey, one of the largest in Europe, towers over the centre from a hill. It’s part of the UNESCO site too. Austria’s history is closely tied to Melk Abbey, because the country’s first rulers are buried here. It’s said to be Austria’s spiritual and cultural centre.

What interested me more than the abbey, though, was the abbey park and its Baroque garden. The park is also called the ‘Paradise Garden’, and it’s planted mainly with medicinal plants. The abbey terrace has a perfect view of the Danube. Napoleon probably used it as a lookout when he made Melk his base during his campaign against Austria. Melk is known around the world for its International Baroque Days (Internationale Barocktage), held right in the abbey. In 2008 National Geographic even named it one of the world’s top historic destinations.

Tip from Milan Right below the abbey in Melk’s historic centre you’ll find the most beautiful post office in Austria. There’s also the restaurant of the Hotel zur Post, which often has seasonal specialities from the region. I ate until I was fit to burst.

View this post on Instagram

Spitz, the Red Gate (Rotes Tor) and the ruins of Hinterhaus Castle

Spitz is an ideal starting point for trips around the Wachau: it’s central and has a lovely atmosphere. I wouldn’t even call it a town, more a very neat little village. Above it, on a hill among the vineyards, stands the Red Gate (Rotes Tor). Why red? It’s one of the town’s seven defensive gates from the Thirty Years’ War. It saw a lot of bloodshed, and that’s where the name comes from. On a brighter note, the climb is worth it for the view over the whole of Spitz and, yet again, the Danube.

The ruins of Hinterhaus Castle

Hinterhaus is a very well-preserved castle ruin above the town. The ruins date from the 12th century, when the Kuenring family ruled here and the castle served as a strategic fortress in the Wachau valley. Together with the Red Gate, a visit to the ruins in Spitz gives you a good idea of how people defended themselves in the Middle Ages.

Tip from Milan For lunch, I’d stop at Gasthof Prankl, a restaurant with a history as long as the town’s. It has been here since 1680 and is now run by the seventh generation of the Prankl family. It feels less like a restaurant and more like lunch at your granny’s. They serve classic regional dishes and, of course, apricot dumplings (Marillenknödel).

Visiting Dürnstein and its abbey

Dürnstein is considered one of the most romantic towns on the Danube. It’s dominated by its abbey and the castle where King Richard the Lionheart was held prisoner. The whole historic town is cobbled, which gives it a very pleasant medieval feel.

Dürnstein is probably the most visited town in the whole Wachau, and in Lower Austria too. It takes its name from the medieval castle of the same name above the town: ‘Dür’ means dry in German and ‘stein’ means stone. The castle always struggled for water because it stood so high above the Danube, something Richard the Lionheart probably felt too during his captivity there. The Swedes almost completely destroyed the castle when they invaded.

Tip from Milan Just outside Dürnstein, about a 10-minute walk from the centre, is the largest wine producer in the Wachau, Domäne Wachau. Their wine shop does tastings: in 2026 it costs €5 for three wines, and they take it off your bill if you spend more than €50.

@milan_bezmapy+249,000 followers

Follow me on Instagram

Follow

What to see in Krems and a trip to Göttweig Abbey

Besides Dürnstein, there’s one more well-known town in the Wachau: Krems an der Donau. It has just under 26,000 inhabitants, but its old town reminds me a lot of the streets of Brașov in Romania. If you’re feeling the heat, I’d also recommend a short walk beyond the historic centre, towards the Donau-Universität Krems (now the Universität für Weiterbildung Krems). There’s a public pool there where you can dip your feet on hot summer days. During the academic year Krems is full of students, because there are several universities right next to each other.

Krems has a really long history that goes back to the Ice Age: archaeologists found the skeletons of infants here, covered by mammoth bones. It’s one of the most valuable archaeological finds in Austria. As in the rest of the Wachau region, wine is the big thing here. The town has plenty of wineries and restaurants serving all kinds of Wachau wines. Like most medieval towns, Krems was surrounded by walls, and the only way into the centre was through its gates. Krems had four of them, and only one survives today: the Steiner Tor.

In Slovak, Krems is called Kremža. Does anyone actually use that name? If you like Kremser mustard (I don’t), this is where it comes from.

Tip from Milan Just outside Krems is probably the most local restaurant I’ve ever been to in Austria. It’s called Graf in Mautern and serves only cold food, beer and wine. I’ve included it for its lovely garden terrace with a view over the whole of Krems. Brush up on your basic German first, though.

Göttweig Abbey near Krems

Just outside the town stands the beautiful Göttweig Abbey, which I had already noticed on the drive into Krems. It was originally a monastery for men only, and it’s still a working monastery today. It has been through a fire and a rebuild, and among other things it now has a very large museum. The original furnishings show how the monks used to live. Napoleon himself is said to have stopped here, and a bed was made up for him. Whether he actually slept in it, nobody knows.

What really caught my eye in the abbey was the large blue fresco above the main staircase. It moves. Paul Troger painted it as a clever optical illusion that makes the ceiling look much higher. But if you stand under the fresco and move from side to side, you’ll see that the illusion doesn’t just raise the ceiling: it also makes it move.

The abbey has stood here since 1083, and the monks looked after the countryside around it. That’s why there’s an unusual sequoia forest today near Paudorf, which lies on the other side of the hill from Krems. (Sequoias are those giant trees we travel to America’s national parks to see.) A forestry school was founded here too. And, needless to say, they grew apricots.

Grafenegg Castle

My last stop before heading home towards Bratislava was Grafenegg Castle, about 15 km beyond Krems. The castle stands in the middle of a large park, and there’s a big auditorium here too.

Danube boat trip in the Wachau

To finish, one more tip: a boat trip on the Danube in the Wachau. Personally, I think it’s the best way to see the whole valley without wearing yourself out trying to see everything at once. It depends where you’re staying, but in the summer season boats run up and down the Danube all day. I went from Krems, where I was staying, to Spitz: about an hour and a half at a very relaxed pace.

You can buy a ticket right at the pier a few minutes before the boat leaves. Plenty of companies run all kinds of boats here, and the official website has the full list with departure times.

Tip from Milan Buses also run the length of the valley, so getting around without a car needn’t be a problem at all. Between buses, boats and maybe a bike (there are several cycle routes), you’ll manage perfectly well in the Wachau without one.

You might also like my seven ideas for day trips in Austria.