Melk

Founded in 1089, this Benedictine house still holds monks who run a school inside it. The library keeps 1888 manuscripts and the ceiling painting is drawn to make the room read taller.

The columns are true marble while the walls are plaster painted to imitate it. A hand laid on each finds a different temperature, which settles which one is stone.

A curved balcony joining the library to the church takes in water and rooftops at once. The stone underfoot turns slippery, so in rain people are let out in a queue.

A baroque pavilion sits deep in the garden with tropical plants and monkeys painted across its walls and ceiling. Chamber music is played inside it through the summer.

The slope running down from the abbey keeps its fifteenth century houses. Door frames carry cut marks showing how high the flood water reached in each year.

Boats run downstream to Krems with vineyards on one bank and ruined castles on the other. Going against the current takes the longer time.

A renaissance courtyard is faced with 1600 fired clay ornaments. The house mounts one themed exhibition a year and the garden is kept as a separate visit.

Flat tracks follow both banks with hardly any climb along the way. At each landing a bicycle can be loaded onto the boat to cross to the other side.

More than 100000 apricot trees are planted on the valley slopes. The bloom is brief, so the hills go white for barely ten days once April opens.

This small church predates the abbey and Roman stones were built into its walls. The door is often locked, so the key is borrowed from the house next door.

The Baroque church that closes the abbey tour, its walls and altars almost entirely gold. Rottmayr painted the dome and ceiling. To fit the twin towers and dome on the hilltop into one shot, look back from across the Danube.

A medieval ruin clinging to a clifftop on the way downriver from Melk. Legend says its lord left captives on a rock ledge over the drop, called the rose garden. From the walls the bends of the Danube lie far below.

A Baroque pilgrims' basilica high over the north bank upstream of Melk, its twin towers seen far along the Danube valley. From the forecourt the view runs over the river to the Alpine foothills. On pilgrimage weekends candle shops open in the street below.

The riverside village where the small Palaeolithic figure of a woman was dug up in 1908. The original is in Vienna's Natural History Museum; here an oversized stone replica marks the spot. Its small museum suits a brief stop for riverside cyclists.

The vineyard hill rising behind the village of Spitz. Its name, thousand-bucket hill, comes from the claim that it yields a thousand buckets of wine in a good year. Paths winding round it look over stone walls down to Spitz and the river.

The castle where Archduke Franz Ferdinand, killed at Sarajevo, lies buried with his wife Sophie. Since she could not enter the imperial crypt, he chose this castle's vault for them in his lifetime. The exhibition inside follows his life.