Why this ride
Out of Vienna and back again: 301 km, roughly 4 h 32 in the saddle. It goes by way of Mariazell and Semmering. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,050 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Mariazell Alpine Loop + Semmering and Wechsel Roads
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 301 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 4 h 32
- Journey
- Loop
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.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Vienna
Vienna rewards the rider who parks the bike and walks. The Innere Stadt, the old centre, sits inside the line of the Ringstrasse, the great boulevard laid out in the nineteenth century where the medieval walls once stood, and it is lined with the opera house, the parliament, the university and a procession of grand museums. At the heart is Stephansdom, the cathedral with a roof of coloured tiles and a tall south tower that has been a landmark for centuries. The Hofburg, once the imperial palace, takes up a sizable chunk of the neighbourhood.
2. Mariazell
According to legend, in 1157 a Benedictine monk named Magnus was travelling through these forests with a small wooden statue of the Virgin when a rock blocked his path; he prayed, the rock split, and he settled on the spot, placing the statue on a tree stump and building a cell around it. That cell became Mariazell, Austria's most important place of pilgrimage. The great basilica that now dominates the little town, with its Gothic tower flanked by two Baroque ones, still houses the statue, and every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims come, many on foot from Vienna.
3. Semmering
Semmering is where Lower Austria meets Styria on a saddle of a little under a thousand metres, and it has been a place of passage and of pleasure for a long time. The pass itself is not high by Alpine standards, but the name carries weight: the Semmering Railway, engineered by Carl von Ghega and opened in the 1850s, was the first true mountain railway in the world, and it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its viaducts and tunnels thread through the valleys below the road, and if you stop at one of the lookouts you may see a train crawling across a stone arch far below.
4. Vienna
Return visit. Read the place description above.
More motorcycle rides nearby
- Semmering and Wechsel Roads ยท 191 km