Liezen is a town in Upper Styria, the capital of the Styrian
Ennstal, and has around 7,500 inhabitants. Liezen has had town
charter since 1947 and is the cultural and economic center of the
Styrian Ennstal with numerous commercial and trading companies and
as the seat of authorities, institutions and service facilities.
Districts of Liezen are Pyhrn and Reithtal.
Liezen is mainly a regional economic center. The places worth
visiting are in the vicinity.
The Liezen old town is the area
with Ausseer Straße and the church square.
Parish church of St.
Veit, the western part dates back to the 16th century.
Kalvarienbergkapelle, probably built around 1770 on the
Kalvarienberg and east of the old town.
Activities
city-rock (climbing center Liezen), Friedau, 8940 Liezen. Tel .: +43
(0) 3612 24 2 20.
In Roman times, the post station Stiriate was built on the road connection leading over the Pyhrnpass, which was of particular importance as the last resting and transformer station for the horse-drawn vehicles of the time before or after the Pyhrnpass. From here roads led westwards across the Ennstal and Ausseerland to the Roman city of Iuvavum (Salzburg), eastwards towards Admont, northwards to the next station "Gabromagum" (also called "Gabromagis") near Windischgarsten. The road led from the Triebener Tauernpass over "Surontio", over Burgfried-Lassing (later Reichsstrasse on the southern slope of Strechau Castle) and over the depression in the eastern part of the Mitterberg into the Ennstal. This post office, from which finds from Roman times, including inscription stones, have been preserved, also formed the starting point for the later settlement.
The first mention of Liezen took place around 1130 in an
inventory of the Admont Abbey under the Slavic name Luecen, which
means "wet meadow" or "moor". The village church, consecrated to St.
Vitus, was first mentioned around 1160; the patronage refers to a
missionary relationship with St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
An important economic factor of the place was on the one hand its
location on the Pyhrn Pass and on the other hand the iron ore mining
on the Salberg, which has been demonstrable since the 13th century.
The iron ore deposits visible on the Rote Wand above Liezen had led
to the creation of a dragon legend, which was also thematized in the
later city arms.
At the end of the 15th century, the church
was rebuilt in the late Gothic style, and it was not until 1600 that
it became an independent parish church. Because of the Turkish
threat in the late Middle Ages, the church was also surrounded by a
tabor. The Liezen branch church was incorporated into the Rottenmann
Abbey in 1515, and it was not until 1614 that the church, which had
meanwhile become Protestant, was elevated to an independent Catholic
parish. The Calvary Church on Salberg, built as a baroque four-cone
building after the plague epidemic of 1714/15, has a crucifixion
group inside by the sculptor Balthasar Prandstätter from Judenburg.
To the west of the town, the Renaissance Grafenegg Castle was built
around 1600, which was finally demolished in 1982 after an eventful
fate. Liezen actually had market functions since the 17th century,
although no actual market rights were granted.
The decisive turning point in Liezen's urban
development came with the revolution of 1848, which ended the
existing manorial conditions. Liezen received a municipal council in
1850 and became the seat of the district administration in 1866.
Above all, however, the period from 1850 onwards was shaped for
Liezen by the economic development into an industrial location for
iron smelting. Josef Pesendorfer (1791–1856) - he is remembered by
the cast iron Pesendorfer Cross from 1827 - founded the Amalienhütte
below the Pyhrn Pass in 1853 (closed in 1893). In 1873 Liezen was
connected to the existing rail network with the Selzthal-Liezen
station on the Kronprinz-Rudolf-Bahn, and in 1875 with its own
station on the new connecting line from Selzthal to Bischofshofen,
the Giselabahn. As a result of this connection, Liezen, famous for
its location, became increasingly a popular holiday destination. The
historic station building from 1875 was demolished in 2016.
One of the most important personalities in Liezen in the later 19th
century was the Viennese industrialist and patron Nikolaus Dumba,
who was granted honorary citizenship in 1870 for his social and
economic commitment to the place. While the hunting lodge, built in
the historicism style, which he had built here in 1874/75 by the
Viennese architect August Krumholz, was demolished in 1960, the
neighboring "Small Villa Dumba" has been preserved. The artists who
stayed in Liezen as guests of the Dumba family included: Rudolf von
Alt, Gottfried Seelos and Karl Pischinger, who died here.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Liezen presented itself as an
ambitious place, which was expressed in the intensive construction
activity. In 1881 a new school building was built according to plans
by the Admont master builder Luigi Franz. The school building was
"modernized" in 1960, losing its architectural character. As early
as 1900 Liezen had tried - unsuccessfully - to be recognized as a
market town and built a representative town hall, which was also the
seat of the district administration. 1902–1904 the court building on
Ausseer Straße was built. In 1911–1912 the late Gothic parish church
was expanded to include a neo-Gothic choir based on a design by the
Linz cathedral builder Matthias Schlager, for which the late
medieval tabor was abandoned.
In the interwar period Liezen's economic development was rather hesitant. In 1925, the brothers Vasold founded the Alpine Art Ceramics in Liezen, which existed until 1960 and, in addition to utility ceramics, also produced sophisticated handicrafts.
Liezen was elevated to the status of a city in
1947 due to the economic and population growth before and after the
Second World War. As part of the promotion of the armaments industry
after the annexation of Austria, the Schmidhütte Liezen was founded
in 1939 by August Schmid-Schmidsfelden. A South Tyrolean settlement
was built to the west of the local area. In 1954, VOEST took over
the now nationalized smelter, which was sold as a result of the
Noricum scandal and was continued as the Liezen machine factory and
foundry since 1994.
Following the town elevation, Liezen took
on an urban development that was associated with a great loss of
historical building fabric. The last remnant of the medieval tabor,
the old schoolhouse, was demolished in 1983. In return, a main
square was built around 1960, marked by two high-rise buildings,
with uniform development on the edge of the square in the style of
functionalism. In 1980 the tax office and employment office were
given a joint new building in the style of brutalism.
On the
occasion of the city elevation in 1947, the Protestant church of
Admont, to whose district Liezen belonged, was raised to the rank of
an independent parish church. The establishment of the Resurrection
Church in Liezen took place in the years 1957-1959, after the
addition of the community center, the official residence of the
pastor was moved from Admont to Liezen.
More recently, the
business center has increasingly shifted south to the federal
highway 320, which was built as a bypass.
On the occasion of
the 70th anniversary of the city of Liezen, a monumental metal
sculpture of the city's heraldic animal, the lindworm, was set up by
the sculptor Naira Boesch-Geworkian at the entrance to the town
center.
Liezen is an old mining and industrial town, but only very few
old buildings remain. The main square in particular consists only of
new buildings. The historic town of Rottenmann, about ten kilometers
to the south, used to be the administrative center. Liezen is
located on the northern edge of the Ennstal, about one kilometer
from the flood-prone banks of the Enns. In the valley widening at
the foot of the Pyhrn Pass, which crosses the Limestone Alps to
Upper Austria, the Pyhrnbach flows into the Enns from the north.
Directly upstream is the district (on the body of the same name),
which has grown together spatially with Liezen. Liezen is also an
important traffic junction.
The flat valley floor of the
Ennstal is two to three kilometers wide and partly swampy: to the
west of the twin towns lies the approximately two square kilometers
large Wörschacher Moos, to the east the Selzthaler Moos.
The municipality of Liezen was merged with
the municipality of Weißenbach bei Liezen as part of the Styrian
municipal structural reform in 2015, the new municipality continues
to bear the name of the municipality of Liezen. The basis for this
is the Styrian Municipal Structural Reform Act - StGsrG.
Liezen consists of four localities and cadastral communities of the
same name (area: as of December 31, 2017; population as of January
1, 2020):
Liezen (6671 inhabitants, 2,684.50 ha) including Am
Berg, Auf der Leiten, Hinteregg, Röth and Salberg
Pyhrn (259
inhabitants, 1,675.61 ha) including Pyhrnerhofsiedlung
Reithtal
(190 Ew., 1,275.03 ha) including Zwirtnersee
Weißenbach near
Liezen (1146 inhabitants, 3,575.59 ha) including a scythe smith
By plane
The nearest international airports are
Vienna-Schwechat (244 km away, around two and a half hours' drive),
Graz-Thalerhof (120 km, around 75 minutes' drive) and Salzburg
Airport (139 km, around one and a half hours' drive).
By
train
Liezen train station is on the Ennstal railway and has
connections to Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Vienna
Liezen
train station is about one kilometer south of the city center.
By street
From the west (Munich - Salzburg area), toll on the
Austrian motorways:
On the Tauernautobahn (A10) via Salzburg
in the direction of Graz / Villach to the Ennstal junction
(Altenmarkt), further about 74 kilometers on the federal road (B146)
and via Schladming to Liezen.
In a variant from Salzburg via the
A1 (Westautobahn) in the direction of Vienna to the Voralpenkreuz
junction and then via the A9 (Pyhrnautobahn) to the "Liezen" exit,
from here another five kilometers on the federal road to Liezen. For
the last section of the motorway, an additional € 5.00 tunnel fee is
due (as of 2015).
You can get there toll-free with numerous local
through-roads (Salzburg, Bad Ischl) via the Salzkammergut and on the
B145.
Liezen is an old mining and industrial town, of which, however, there
are very few old buildings left. Especially the main square consists
only of new buildings. In the past, the historic town of Rottenmann,
located about ten kilometers to the south, was the administrative
headquarters. Liezen is located on the northern edge of the Enns Valley,
about one kilometer from the flood-prone banks of the Enns. In the
valley at the foot of the Pyhrn Pass, which crosses the Limestone Alps
to Upper Austria, the Pyhrnbach flows from the north into the Enns.
Directly upstream is the district (on the water of the same name), which
has grown together spatially with Liezen. In addition, Liezen is an
important transport hub.
The flat valley floor of the Enns Valley
is two to three kilometers wide and partly swampy here: to the west of
the twin city lies the Wörschacher Moos, which is about two square
kilometers in size, to the east the Selzthaler Moos and the Zwirtner
Lake.
The municipality of Liezen was merged with the municipality of
Weißenbach bei Liezen in 2015 as part of the Styrian municipal
structural reform, the new municipality continues the name of the
municipality of Liezen. The basis for this is the Styrian Municipal
Structural Reform Act – StGsrG.
Liezen consists of four villages
and cadastral communities of the same name (area: 31 December 2017;
number of inhabitants as of 1 January 2023):
Liezen (6617 Ew.,
2,684.50 ha) including Am Berg, Auf der Leiten, Hinteregg, Röth and
Salberg
Pyhrn (257 Ew., 1,675.61 ha) including Pyhrnerhofsiedlung
Reithtal (188 Ew., 1,275.03 ha) including Zwirtnersee
Weißenbach bei
Liezen (1189 Ew., 3,575.59 ha) including scythe smith