The best road cycling routes in Hartweichs

The historic old town of Zwettl in the Waldviertel captivates with medieval city walls, colorful baroque facades, and the colorful Hundertwasser fountain on the main square. Highlights include the Old Town Hall with its city museum, the striking Antonturm, and the nearby Zwettl Abbey (Cistercian monastery).

Between Klosterstraße and Schulturm, the city wall is integrated as an outer wall into the St.Martin retirement home and can be viewed from the adjacent car park. Numerous new breakthroughs will be made during the construction work at the retirement home.

Sometime between 1935 and 1938, the tower gets its current roof; before that, it was known with brick battlements.

The school tower stands at the easternmost corner of the city wall. The tower's floor plan is polygonal (eight sides of different lengths). The tower is four stories high, with a descending floor without windows and three ascending ones. It is placed in front of the existing wall, which can be seen very clearly on the wide inner side and the connection corners. Access to the tower is via an opening in the city wall. On the 2nd upper floor, there is a bricked-up door, which presumably led to the rampart. The defensive tower was formerly called Hafnerturm, due to the neighboring Hafner workshops at Neuer Markt. It gets its current name from the citizens' school founded in 1872, the first in Lower Austria, which is located on the same plot and is now run as a New Middle School for Sport and Economy.

Otherwise only released for agricultural vehicles

Arbesbach Castle is a top highlight that you should definitely plan a visit to. Even from a distance, you can recognize the so-called "Waldviertel's fang" (Stockzahn des Waldviertels). Once you arrive at the site, 126 steps lead up to the entrance where admission (currently €2.50) is payable in coins or by card. Then it continues inside upwards to the platform, which offers a fantastic view. There is also a circular path around the tower, which however requires some surefootedness and suitable shoes.

The municipal authorities succeeded in winning over Master Hundertwasser to plan and build a fountain system in the main square. The presentation of the fountain model met with great approval from the people of Zwettl, but also with vehement rejection. In 1994, the fountain system, consisting of three main elements – the two fountain columns with collecting basins and the pavilion – was handed over to the public. It has since been a popular meeting point in the heart of the city. Friedensreich Hundertwasser died in February 2000 at the age of 71.

Until the end of the 19th century, a monumental public fountain stood in the middle of the main square, the terminus of the oldest Zwettl water pipeline dating back to the early 17th century; a place where the population met, not just to fetch water. In 1925, a war memorial was erected here, and from the mid-20th century onwards, the square in the heart of the city was primarily used as a parking area. In the early 1990s, the municipality of Zwettl decided to redesign the main square. The aim was to give the city an attractive center again and thus preserve the tradition of the old Zwettl main square for the present and the future. Friedensreich Hundertwasser, born Friedrich Stowasser in 1928, had owned an old mill on the banks of the Kamp river above Zwettl since the 1970s.