Braunau am Inn offers different ways to explore the city’s history and enjoy outdoor activities: the City Experience Trail leads to original historic sites in the city centre, while the Sculpture Trail showcases art along its own route. Museums complement these explorations with individual objects and insights into past ways of life. You can plan your trip around whether you want to focus on historic places, collections or the Im Tal local recreation area.
Historic Places and Collections
The City Experience Trail runs through the city centre to original historic sites and is marked by eight pylons. The stops connect the trail with the city’s history, without requiring you to set aside a particular amount of walking time. The distinction between the trail and the collections can help you decide what to focus on: the trail draws attention to historic places in the city, while the museums showcase specific objects, interiors and their history.
The Historic Vorderbad Bathhouse was first mentioned in writing in 1592. Light panels, projections and listening stations there provide information about bathing, various healing practices, life in the city and archaeological finds. The topics thus range from past practices to material traces of the past. If you are particularly interested in everyday life and the history of bathing, this offers a different perspective from the art and history collections.
Craft history takes centre stage at the Local Heritage Museum with its bell foundry: the building houses the oldest bell foundry workshop in the German-speaking world still preserved in its original form, dating from around 1385. The interior also includes a well-preserved smoke kitchen and a parlour with furniture from the Baroque and Biedermeier periods. The workshop, kitchen and living room offer different perspectives on craftsmanship and domestic life. You can consider these details as a complement to the historic sites on the City Experience Trail, without treating the themes as the same.
The Herzogsburg District Museum offers a different focus. Its changing Nativity scene comprises around 200 figures created by Johann Georg Libigo in 1730. The archaeological collection also displays the Hallstatt-period gold neck ring from Uttendorf. Thus, an extensive group of figures and an individual archaeological object are presented side by side. If you are particularly interested in arts and crafts, archaeological finds or historic interiors, the different collections offer distinct thematic focuses.
Sculpture Trail and Im Tal Open Spaces
The Braunau am Inn Sculpture Trail runs from Palmplatz via Malerwinkel to the city wall. It includes eight steel sculptures made in 2023 as part of a sculptors’ symposium. The trail thus connects artworks with a specific context of creation to a route through the city. The Palm Memorial is a separate landmark: the bronze statue created by Konrad Knoll of Munich depicts the Nuremberg bookseller Johann Philipp Palm, who was shot in 1806. The memorial was unveiled in 1866.
If you would like to include outdoor activities alongside cultural attractions, Motorikpark® Braunau offers another option. It was completed in August 2017 and has more than 60 pieces of equipment for free exercise in the open air. In the Im Tal local recreation area, the renaturalised Fischbach stream flows through gently rolling countryside. This makes it a very different focus for an outing from the historic places and collections in the city.
A covered footbridge and cycle bridge over the Enknach provides an additional, shorter connection to the Im Tal local recreation area and the Motorikpark. It was opened for use in December 2022. When planning your trip, you can treat cultural attractions and time outdoors as different focuses: the City Experience Trail, museums and Sculpture Trail lead to historic places, objects and art; Im Tal and the Motorikpark focus on activity and landscape.
Discover more destinations: Moosdorf, Mattighofen, Wimpassing, Sankt Johann am Walde, Gilgenberg Am Weilhart, Sankt Veit Im Innkreis, Helpfau-Uttendorf, Haigermoos.
Go to the main travel overview: Braunau Am Inn.
