Marchegg

Marchegg was founded in 1268 by King Ottokar II of Bohemia as a fortified city on the grandest scale — walls embracing an area meant for a metropolis that the Middle Ages never delivered. The result, centuries later, is one of Austria's most poetic urban spaces: a small town rattling gently inside its enormous medieval enclosure, with fields inside the walls and history out of all proportion to the population.

The true masters of Marchegg arrive each March by air. In the water-meadows of the March river, beside the baroque castle, nests the largest tree-breeding colony of white storks in Central Europe — dozens of pairs building their great nests not on chimneys but in ancient oaks, as their ancestors did before chimneys existed. The WWF reserve protecting the floodplain has made the town a place of pilgrimage for birdwatchers, and the storks' spring return is the municipal event of the year. Schloss Marchegg itself, splendidly restored as centrepiece of a recent Lower Austrian state exhibition, presides over the colony like a benevolent landlord.

With Bratislava's towers visible across the border ten kilometres away, a cycling paradise along the March and Danube floodplains, and an open-air stage carrying summer concerts and festivals, Marchegg offers a rare combination: a king's ambition, a stork's fidelity, and the quietest frontier in Europe.