Wels

Wels has been a marketplace for two thousand years and a stage for one imperial exit. Roman Ovilava was a full colonia and administrative capital on the Danube frontier's hinterland — the town museum's bronzes and the famous Wels Venus testify to its rank — and the medieval town that inherited the crossing of the Traun never lost the trading habit: the Welser Messe, its great fair, remains one of Austria's premier exhibition events, the modern descendant of markets held since the Middle Ages.

History gave Wels one solemn distinction: in the castle by the town wall, in January 1519, Emperor Maximilian I died — the "last knight", refused entry to Innsbruck by creditors, ending his restless reign in this merchant town. The Burg now houses the city museum, keeping the emperor's memory beside collections of Austrian everyday life. The long Stadtplatz that leads to it is among Upper Austria's finest: a procession of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque façades — the arcaded courtyards hiding behind them — closed by the Ledererturm, the leather-workers' tower of 1618 that serves as the city's emblem.

Contemporary Wels is Upper Austria's second city, practical and prosperous, its cultural season carried by the Stadttheater, concert series in the Minorite church and halls, and festivals that fill the square. A town where an empire once ended, and the market never closed.