Großglockner High Alpine Road

The Großglockner High Alpine Road is Austria's most famous panoramic road and runs right through the Hohe Tauern National Park. Over 36 hairpins it reaches viewpoints above 2,500 m, among them the Franz-Josefs-Höhe with a view of the Großglockner (3,798 m) and the Pasterze glacier. Marmots and ibex can often be watched along the road.

Highlights

• 36 hairpins up to over 2,500 m
• Franz-Josefs-Höhe with a view of the Großglockner and Pasterze
• Location in the Hohe Tauern National Park
• Wildlife watching along the road

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road ranks among the great structures of the early 20th century and connects, by a winding route, the Salzburg region with Carinthia, climbing in countless hairpins to over 2500 metres altitude. It was built between 1930 and 1935 in a time of great economic hardship, also as a job-creation project, and at its opening it was celebrated as a triumph of the automobile over the high mountains, depicted on posters that all but sent the car driving up into the heaven of the peaks.

The road leads through all the altitude zones of the Alps, from blooming alpine meadows over the region of the mountain pines up into the barren world of rock and ice at the edge of the glaciers. At the Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe the view opens onto the Pasterze and the summit of the Grossglockner, and at the high resting places marmots and, with a little luck, ibex and bearded vultures can be observed. The winding route quickly became a venue for motorsport and to this day attracts lovers of historic vehicles as well as cyclists who test themselves on the steep ramps. In winter the road remains closed and disappears under metres-high snow, so that it has to be cleared anew each spring. More than a mere traffic connection, the High Alpine Road is a staging of the mountain world, a panoramic route that made the experience of altitude accessible to everyone who sets out on the drive through the Hohe Tauern.