Klagenfurt

Klagenfurt guards its founding monster in the main square: the Lindwurm, a winged dragon carved in 1593 from a single block of stone, commemorating the beast that supposedly haunted the primordial marshes — its head modelled, endearingly, on a rhinoceros. Around it spreads the elegant capital of Carinthia, rebuilt by Italian architects after a Renaissance fire, its arcaded courtyards giving the city a distinctly southern accent; Italy and Slovenia are both an easy drive over the mountains.

The city's true glory lies just west: the Wörthersee, Austria's warmest alpine lake — and, acre for acre, perhaps the most musical water in Europe. Brahms composed his Second Symphony on its shore, marvelling that melodies flew so thick one had to avoid stepping on them; Mahler built a composing hut at Maiernigg, where Symphonies Four through Eight took shape to the lake's rhythm; Alban Berg wrote his last works in his lakeside house nearby. Klagenfurt itself gave literature two of its modern masters — Robert Musil and Ingeborg Bachmann — and each summer the Bachmann Prize turns the city into the German language's literary courtroom, with authors reading live before a jury and a television audience.

The Stadttheater's opera seasons, the Wörthersee lakeside stage and the Musikverein für Kärnten carry the musical inheritance of a city where even the dragon seems to be listening.