The story of this place
Wedged between a mountain and a mirror-still lake, Hallstatt has been mined for salt for over 7,000 years, making it one of the oldest continuously worked mines on Earth. Excavations of an Iron Age cemetery here in the 19th century were so significant that archaeologists named the entire Central European early Iron Age (c.800–450 BC) the Hallstatt culture after it. The white gold of salt made this remote village wealthy for millennia. Its picture-perfect houses and slender church spire, reflected in the Hallstättersee, earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 1997 and inspired a full-scale replica in China.