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Kirchstetten Poets' Path
Hiking tour Starting from Kirchstetten, Friedhofstraße, parking lot
- Difficulty: Easy
- Distance: 7,38 km
- Duration: 2:15 h
- Ascent: 69 m elevation gain
- Descent: 69 m elevation gain
This tour invites you to hike in the footsteps of poets. Josef Weinheber and W.H. Auden spent their twilight years in Kirchstetten and dedicated numerous lines to the landscape and the village. A hike through Kirchstetten is poetry you can touch.
- Starting point of the tour
- Kirchstetten, Friedhofstraße, parking lot
- Difficulty: Easy
- Distance: 7,38 km
- Duration: 2:15 h
- Ascent: 69 m elevation gain
- Descent: 69 m elevation gain
- Fitness level required:1/6
- Overall experience:4/6
- Scenery:2/6
- Lowest point245 m
- Highest point322 m
- Round tour
- With refreshment stops
This tour invites you to hike in the footsteps of poets. Josef Weinheber and W.H. Auden spent their twilight years in Kirchstetten and dedicated numerous lines to the landscape and the village. A hike through Kirchstetten is poetry you can touch.
"Land, just as I love it: nourishing, simple, quiet farmland" are the words used by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden to describe his final resting place. His fellow Austrian poet Josef Weinheber, who had already discovered the beauty, tranquillity and inspirational power of the picturesque village on the Westbahn twenty years earlier, also repeatedly took Kirchstetten as the subject of his works: "A church tower, a few farms away, and again nothing but solitude, a strip of corn, a strip of clover, potato furrows each and every, and field here and field there, and on and around and on and on". "There's the church, the cemetery, the innkeeper: as befits life and death, everything close at hand and in the village; a few village lanes, gables and houses, and already it runs out into the meadows, up the slope the forest draws its border". The first traces of poetry can be found under a maple tree next to the church: a memorial stone commemorates Weinheber "our great lyricist". Hinterholzstrasse and Audenstrasse finally lead us to the house on the edge of the forest next to the Westautobahn highway where Auden spent his summers. The local authority has set up the study and a documentation room here for visitors to view. A few hundred meters further on is Weinheber's estate. Some of his private rooms can be visited by appointment. His final resting place is in the garden of the house. The route continues through undeveloped farmland and untouched nature, past the 600-year-old oak tree, a natural monument. Here, Auden's and Weinheber's lines become tangible once again.
- Equipment Normal hiking equipment
- Route description The route starts in the town center of Kirchstetten, at the parking lot near the cemetery. You set off heading north on the Lothar Bürger Trail. On the left is the village church. At the next intersection, follow the marking No. 5 “Poets' Trail” to the left and then go along Ringstraße. You reach Weinheber Square, cross it, and continue into Hinterholzstraße. Next, cross the Sichelbach stream and go under the motorway A1. Now you are in the district of Hinterholz. Here, after a few meters, turn right and then left onto Audenstraße. After a short uphill section, you come to house number 6, where the world-famous American poet Wystan Hugh Auden spent his last years. Continue straight through a small woodland to Weinheberstraße. At the crossroads on the edge of the forest stands the Weinheber house with the grave of the writer. Visits are only possible by prior arrangement. Turn right and cross the motorway A1 again. After about 200m you come to the natural monument “600-year-old oak.” Here turn left and then follow the WIR circular trail marking. Via field paths, you reach the village of Sichelbach. Here turn right, heading north onto the road and continue until Wiener Straße. Cross it and then the tracks of the Westbahn railway. Afterward, walk along the tracks for about 400m and then turn left. This leads you to the Totzenbach stream, along whose bank you walk eastward for about half a kilometer. At the next crossroads, cross the bridge and then turn right toward the railway crossing. Walk again along the railway tracks to the station. Cross it and return to Sommerhofstraße. You reach a junction with the Weinheber poplar in the middle. Here turn left and return to the town center.
- Parking Public parking lot at Kirchstetten cemetery
- Getting there Motorway A1, exit Böheimkirchen, direction Böheimkirchen, direction Neulengbach, direction Kirchstetten town center
Recommended period
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Vienna Woods Tourism GmbH
3002, Purkersdorf, Hauptplatz 11
Tel. 02231/621 76
E-mail: office@wienerwald.info
Website: www.wienerwald.info
Market Town Kirchstetten
3062 Kirchstetten, Wienerstraße 32
Tel. 02743/8206
E-mail: gemeindeamt@kirchstetten.at
Website: www.kirchstetten.at
Letzte Änderung: 16 Mar 2026