Linz - Befestigung Schlossberg and Künzing - Amphitheater und Vicus
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
227 km
Riding-time estimate
3 h 36
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Linz it runs 227 km to Linz; allow about 3 h 36 of riding. It goes by way of Schlögen - Kastell, Passau Haibach - Burgus, Künzing - Amphitheater und Vicus and back through Passau Haibach - Burgus. It crosses from Austria into Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Scenic road chapters
Schlögen - Kastell → Passau Haibach - Burgus
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 43 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Chapter facts
Length
37 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Linz - Befestigung Schlossberg
Linz is a city that has reinvented itself. For much of the twentieth century it was known mainly for its steelworks and its uncomfortable links with the Nazi period; today it markets itself as a city of culture and technology, with the Ars Electronica centre glowing on the Danube bank at night, the Lentos art museum opposite, and a lively music scene. The Schlossberg, the castle hill above the old town, is where it all began: the Romans had a fort here called Lentia, part of the Danube frontier of the empire, and the Danube Limes is now on the World Heritage list. The castle that stands there now dates largely from the Renaissance, built for Emperor Frederick III, who spent his last years in Linz and died here in 1493. It houses a branch of the Upper Austrian state museum.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Linz - Befestigung Schlossberg is where the day begins. Next is Schlögen - Kastell.
2. Schlögen - Kastell
The Danube here performs one of its most famous tricks. Forced by hard granite, the river makes two tight hairpin turns, the Schlögener Schlinge, doubling back on itself in a loop so neat it looks drawn with a compass. From the viewpoint on the wooded slope above, a short walk from the road, you look down on the river curling around a forested spur, and it is one of the classic images of Upper Austria.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Schlögen - Kastell comes up about 41 km into the recorded legs. Next is Passau Haibach - Burgus.
3. Passau Haibach - Burgus
Passau sits where three rivers meet, the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz, and from the high point of the Oberhaus fortress you can see their colours run side by side before mixing: green from the Inn, blue-grey from the Danube, and dark from the Ilz, which flows down from the Bavarian Forest stained by peat. The Romans knew this spot well. They had a fort here called Batavis, named after a unit of Batavian soldiers from the Rhine delta, and another at Boiotro across the Inn, and along the Danube downstream they built small fortified towers called burgi to watch the river and signal to each other. One of these late Roman burgi stood near Haibach, and its remains are part of the Danube Limes, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021 as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 78 km into the recorded legs you reach Passau Haibach - Burgus. Next is Künzing - Amphitheater und Vicus.
4. Künzing - Amphitheater und Vicus
Künzing sits on the Danube in Lower Bavaria, in a broad, fertile plain known as the Gäuboden, and in Roman times it was a place with a name, Quintana. The Romans built a fort here in the second century, one of the posts on the river frontier of the province of Raetia, and a civilian settlement, a vicus, grew up beside it, with houses, workshops and even an amphitheatre. The Danube Limes in Germany, Austria and Slovakia was listed by UNESCO in 2021, and Künzing is one of the places where it is easiest to grasp what daily life along the frontier was like.