Копфинг

Kopfing im Innkreis solved the problem of being a small village in a big forest with an idea of beautiful simplicity: if the trees are the treasure, walk among their crowns. The Baumkronenweg, opened in 2005 as one of the pioneering treetop walks of Europe — locals call it "the original" — carries visitors on massive timber trestles up among the crowns of the Sauwald, the "pig forest" plateau of northern Upper Austria, where the borders of Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic converge. A forty-metre observation tower lifts the view over three countries and, on clear days, to the distant Alps; treehouse lodgings let guests fall asleep in the canopy; and an open-air stage among the trunks turns the forest itself into a summer concert hall.

The village beneath the walkway is Innviertel countryside at its most authentic: a parish church at the centre, farms rolling toward Passau and the Danube gorge at Engelhartszell — where Austria's only Trappist abbey, Engelszell, offers Rococo splendour and monastery liqueurs a few kilometres away.

Kopfing's cultural life follows the sturdy rural Austrian pattern — church music, brass bands, choirs and village festivals sustained by everyone at once — now amplified by the visitors the treetops attract. A community that turned its forest into its stage: few villages have thought so well of their own trees.