Cortisen Am See

Cortisen Am See

The Salzkammergut is the lake district of central Austria, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape of glacial lakes, limestone peaks and market towns that sits between Salzburg and the Dachstein massif, its name derived from the salt mines that made this region one of the wealthiest in the Habsburg empire for centuries. The lakes, around 70 of them, are collectively one of the most beautiful assemblages of Alpine water scenery in Europe: the Wolfgangsee, the Hallstättersee, the Mondsee, the Traunsee, each with its own character and shoreline. Hallstatt, which gives its name to an entire archaeological period, sits at the southern end of the Hallstättersee. The village of St. Gilgen at the Wolfgangsee was the birthplace of Mozart's mother. The combination of Alpine scenery, Habsburg cultural heritage, and the particular Austrian way of taking pleasure in landscape and food and gemütlichkeit makes the Salzkammergut one of those regions that tends to convert visitors permanently. St. Wolfgang sits on the north shore of the Wolfgangsee, its white pilgrimage church with Michael Pacher's 1481 altarpiece one of the finest examples of late Gothic art in the German-speaking world, its lakefront village of painted facades and flower-decked balconies the kind of place that photographers find impossible to leave. The Wolfgangsee itself is clear and cold and surrounded on both sides by steep wooded hillsides that rise directly from the water, the Schafberg peak accessible by a rack railway that has run since 1893. Cortisen am See sits directly on the lake in the centre of St. Wolfgang, the first boutique hotel in the Salzkammergut, owned and personally designed by Roland Ballner, who has spent decades collecting art, objects and design pieces from travels around the world and deploying them throughout the property in a way that makes it unlike any other hotel in the region. The 36 rooms and suites are individually designed in entirely different palettes and themes, zebra print and lime green alongside cornflower blue and muted gold, Moroccan textiles beside contemporary Austrian art, no two spaces sharing an aesthetic. The Boat Shed Suite occupies the upper deck of the boathouse directly above the lake, with its own sauna and the sound of water below. All rooms face either the lake or the mountains. The property is adults only, accepting no guests under 16, and the atmosphere reflects this: quiet, purposeful, oriented around pleasure rather than activity. The 25-metre indoor infinity pool has panoramic windows directly onto the lake and surrounding peaks, the view from the water a genuine architectural achievement. A Finnish sauna, bio sauna and a boat shed sauna in the boathouse itself handle the wellness programme alongside massage treatments available in summer in the garden pavilion. The restaurant, awarded three Falstaff forks, serves regional Austrian cuisine with an international wine list of over 300 labels, dinner served on the lakeside terrace when the weather allows, which in the Salzkammergut's warm summers is frequently. The six-course breakfast changes daily and is served à la carte directly to the table. The hotel has its own motorboat and rents Harley-Davidson motorcycles for the country roads around the lake, both of which are exactly right for the spirit of the place. The guests are Austrian and German couples who know the Salzkammergut well and have chosen this over the more conventional options, alongside the international visitors who discovered the region through Hallstatt or Salzburg and followed the lakes inland. They tend to arrive with no particular agenda beyond the lake, the food and the mountains, and they tend to return. The short version: A 36-room adults-only boutique hotel on the shore of the Wolfgangsee in St. Wolfgang, the Salzkammergut's first boutique property, owned and personally designed by Roland Ballner with decades of collected art and objects from around the world. Every room individually designed, a Boat Shed Suite above the lake, a 25-metre panoramic infinity pool facing the water and mountains, three-Falstaff-fork restaurant, and a boathouse sauna directly on the lake. The Salzkammergut at its most quietly extraordinary.