wilbau: HallStatt World Heritage Austria

I live pretty close to Hallstatt, just a few miles away, and a couple of months ago I took some photos that I share now, to give you some impressions of the area here. Plenty of books have been written about this place, but I will not go into any details this time. I'll only say, that this place has been populated now for about 4000 years. The Celts were here, the Romans ... Nations passed through, Barbarians invaded for one thing: Salt

Let's start our virtual walk in Obertraun, which is just across the Hallstaetter Lake (Hallstätter See) at a favorite place of mine: an old graveyard, from which you have a beautiful view of the Hallstatt area.

Now on the following picture, the village right before us belongs to Obertraun. Across the lake there is a mountain on the left called 'Hirlatz'. Hirlatz is full of caves and they all aren't completely investigated yet.
The valley in the middle of the picture is the 'EchernTal', the Echern-valley. It's another favorite place of mine, it deserves a post for itself, which will come some time soon. In this place there were found ruins of Roman houses and a graveyard from the time of the emigration of nations.

Now we changed our position and take a look from another view. Across the lake is Hallstatt.

Now we get a bit closer:

And on the following photo you see (from the distance) the area of the saltmines, an area also of archaeological excavations.
However salt is being won up to this very day.

Yes, looks pretty romantic right? Well there isn't much sun here in winter times. What we don't see here, are the mountains ('DachStein, KrippenStein) in our back and on our left side.

In the following photo we take a look to the right side, far right at Hallstatt. This is the direction to where the salt was shipped. To the Traun - River from where the salt would be transported into a variety of European regions.

Some more Info at: