EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

At the Chiemgau's far eastern end, just 19km from Salzburg, the old salt-producing town of BAD REICHENHALL lies in a majestic mountain-framed setting in the valley of the River Saalach. Its saline springs are the most concentrated in Europe, with a salt content of 24 percent. Their curative properties led to its nineteenth-century development into one of the country's classiest spas - a status it still holds - and the town is full of grand villas from this period.

The old saltworks, the Alte Saline (guided tours April-Oct daily 10-11.30am & 2-4pm; Nov-March Tues & Thurs 2-4pm; DM7/¬3.50), are at the southern edge of the town centre. They were established in the sixteenth century, but remodelled in the 1830s by King Ludwig I according to the mock-medieval tastes then in vogue. All the equipment - including a pair of waterwheels thirteen metres in diameter and fifteen tonnes in weight - is in good working order and can be seen in action, but production has long since moved to larger and more practical premises a few blocks away.

Just to the north the elegant Ludwigstrasse, the town's main street, is lined with exclusive shops and spa hotels. At its far end is the Kurpark , a carefully tended park with mountain views and the principal spa buildings, the Kurhaus and the Trinkhalle ; the latter regularly hosts concerts by the forty-strong Philharmonisches Orchester, the largest spa orchestra in Germany. The focal point of the park is the huge wooden Gradierwerk , whose function is to ensure that the air is kept as fresh and healthy as possible. Still further north, beyond Karlspark, is the basilica of St Zeno , built in the early thirteenth century in the Lombard Romanesque style. Although remodelled down the centuries, it preserves some of its original features, including the peaceful cloisters and the magnificent, very Italianate coloured-marble entrance portal complete with crouching lions and a tympanum showing the Madonna and Child adored by the church's patron and St Rupert, the Irish monk who became the first bishop of Salzburg.