Linz
— — a working river city, lit from the water.
Not only on a wall.
“Austria's third city sits where the Danube cuts a wide bend through Upper Austria, halfway between Salzburg and Vienna. Old town and baroque squares on the south bank, the Pöstlingberg basilica on a ridge to the north, and the river working through the middle. Linz traded steel for media art a generation ago and now the Ars Electronica building throws coloured light over the water most evenings. The Hauptplatz holds the Trinity Column and one of the largest enclosed medieval squares in central Europe.
Linz, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Linz is the capital of Upper Austria and the country's third-largest city, with a population of roughly 212,000 set on both banks of the Danube at an elevation of 266 metres. It lies about 185 kilometres west of Vienna and 130 kilometres east of Salzburg, on the rail line between them. The Hauptplatz, laid out in the thirteenth century at around 13,200 square metres, is one of the largest enclosed medieval squares in central Europe and carries the 1723 Trinity Column at its centre. Linz was named a UNESCO City of Media Arts in 2014 in recognition of the Ars Electronica programme.
The Ars Electronica Center, opened on the north bank in 1996 and rebuilt in 2009, wraps its facade in a programmable LED skin that throws coloured light across the Danube most evenings. Across the water the Lentos Kunstmuseum, opened in 2003, lights its glass envelope in shifting blues and pinks designed by Weber + Hofer. The Ars Electronica Festival, run every September since 1979, fills the river bridges with projection-mapped works and ends with the Linzer Klangwolke — a free open-air sound-and-light event in the Donaupark that draws crowds in the tens of thousands.
The Pöstlingbergbahn, opened in 1898 as the world's steepest adhesion-only mountain railway, climbs 255 metres in just over four kilometres from the Hauptplatz to the basilica on Pöstlingberg, where the view takes in the city, the river bend, and the Alps to the south on a clear day. The pilgrimage church at the top was finished in 1748. The old town on the south bank holds the Mariendom — Austria's largest church by capacity at around 20,000 — and the baroque Alter Dom where Bruckner played as cathedral organist from 1856 to 1868.