Enns claims to be the oldest town in Austria, on the strength of a charter granted in 1212, but its roots go much deeper. Just outside the modern town lay Lauriacum, a Roman legionary fortress that housed the Second Italian Legion and grew into one of the most important places on the Danube frontier, with a civilian town, temples and, as the Gräberstraße name suggests, roads lined with cemeteries. The Romans buried their dead along the roads outside settlements, and excavations here have found hundreds of graves, stones and offerings. The site is part of the Danube Limes World Heritage listing.
Christianity left its mark too. Saint Florian, a Roman officer, was drowned in the Enns river in 304 for refusing to give up his faith, and the great Augustinian monastery of St. Florian, a few kilometres away, stands over his supposed grave; the composer Anton Bruckner was organist there and is buried beneath the organ. In Enns itself, the tall Stadtturm stands in the middle of the main square, and the basilica of St. Laurenz in the suburb of Lorch is built over Roman and early Christian remains. Across the Danube, the memorial at Mauthausen, a former Nazi concentration camp, is a sobering reminder of a much darker chapter.
The riding around Enns offers variety. The town sits where the Enns river meets the Danube, and roads follow both valleys: south, along the Enns, towards Steyr and the mountains of the Kalkalpen national park, with winding roads and dramatic scenery; east and west, along the Danube, through farmland and villages. Traffic can be heavy near Linz and on the main roads, but the side roads are quiet and scenic.
Enns is big enough for fuel, banks and a choice of restaurants, and its main square, with the tall Stadtturm in the middle, is a good place to sit in the sun with a coffee and a slice of Linzer torte, the latticed jam tart from the city just up the road. The town museum holds many of the finds from Lauriacum, including tombstones from the roads of the dead. Allow half a day for St. Florian if you can; the abbey's library and Bruckner's organ are extraordinary, and the drive there is a short, pleasant run through farmland.