Enns calls itself the oldest town in Austria, and it has a very good case, since a Roman settlement stood here long before there was an Austria to speak of. Roman Lauriacum was a legionary base on the Danube frontier, and around the fort grew what the Romans called the canabae, a sprawling civilian settlement of traders, craftsmen, veterans' families, innkeepers and anyone else who made a living from the soldiers. This corner of the map marks the north-eastern end of that civilian quarter.
Look at the ground and you will find little. Roman Enns lies under modern houses, gardens and fields, and archaeologists have worked out the layout mostly from excavated walls, graves and bits of pottery. The ordinary pattern is plain: strips of workshops along the roads leading out from the camp, a mixture of timber and stone houses, and cemeteries outside the settlement along the highways. That all belongs to the frontier of the empire, the Limes, which runs along the Danube and has been added to the UNESCO list. For a rider, the lesson is that the great river was once the edge of the known world, and the land south of it was Rome.
The modern town is a pleasant one. A long main square is lined with painted houses and dominated by a tall tower from the sixteenth century, with a clock face and a pointed roof, and there are fine cafés beneath it. The Enns river, which gives the town its name, forms the old boundary between Upper and Lower Austria. A little way off, in the district of Lorch, stands the basilica of Saint Laurence, built over older foundations and with a small museum explaining the Roman past.
The roads in the area are mostly flat and fast, running along the Danube plain through farmland and small villages, with the odd tighter section where the land rises toward the hills. This is not a route for corner hunters. It is a place to understand history by riding through it. Enns has nearly ten thousand people and plenty of fuel and food, and Linz lies about twenty kilometres away to the west if you need anything larger. Come in spring or autumn, and take your time at the museums and the river.