Kitzbühel Austria - Kitzbühel Travel Guide - Kitzbühel Ski Resort

Kitzbühel, Austria

Innenstadt, Kitzbühel, Austria

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Kitzbühel Travel Guide

Introduction

Kitzbühel is a small Tyrolian resort town in the Kitzbüheler Alps with international renown and huge snob appeal, and fabulous skiing at its doorstep to boot. It is to Austria what St. Moritz is to Switzerland and Aspen to America. Only, Kitzbühel has something more: It has an absolutely charming old town center, with medieval walls and cobblestone alleys and streets, fronted by historic buildings with painted façades, housing elegant shops and boutiques and fine restaurants. It's really quite a cozy little town, albeit pricey and unabashedly high-brow, the domain of well-heeled crowds where expensive furs and designer labels are more in vogue than the latest in ski wear. It is, in fact, a place to indulge, a place to linger, a place to be seen. Still, there's no denying Kitzbühel's stature as a world-class ski resort either, where the annual World Cup Ski Races draw the world's best alpine skiers to such internationally-renowned events as the Hahnenkamm – a ski race run on the resort's legendary Streif slope, among the most famous and challenging in the world, where skiers can easily gather speeds of up to 140 km an hour!

Location

Kitzbühel is situated on the northern edge of Austria’s Kitzbüheler Alps in the Tyrol, stringing out along the Kitzbüheler Ache River in a valley hemmed in by the 5,616-foot (1,712 m) Hahnenkamm to the west and the 6,548-foot (1,996 m) Kitzbüheler Horn to the east. From Innsbruck it is 60 miles (97 km) to the northeast, from Salzburg 47 miles (75 km) to the southwest, and from Munich, Germany, 103 miles (165 km) south. It can be accessed by both road and rail.