Austria's digital capital — Ars Electronica, Danube baroque, and the original Linzer Torte
Linz is Austria's most surprising city — a former steel-and-chemicals industrial capital on the Danube that completely reinvented itself as a technology and digital arts hub, winning the European Capital of Culture in 2009 and hosting the annual Ars Electronica Festival, the world's leading event for art, technology, and society since 1979. The historic Linz Hauptplatz (Main Square) is one of the largest baroque squares in Europe, and the Linzer Torte — a lattice-topped jam pastry first recorded in 1653 — is generally considered the world's oldest cake recipe still in continuous production.
Linz was a significant Roman settlement (Lentia) and later a medieval trading city, but its historical fame rests primarily on its role as a Habsburg residence — Emperor Friedrich III lived and died in Linz, and Maximilian I was born here. In the modern era, Linz became Austria's industrial powerhouse, and (infamously) Adolf Hitler's childhood home — he spent his formative years here and retained an obsessive attachment to Linz his entire life, planning to turn it into a world-class museum city after his planned war victory. Post-war Linz deliberately reconstructed itself through arts and edu…