About fifty percent of the 35 km long Wachaustrasse is located close to the left bank of the Danube. During its construction in the 1950s, the media referred to the road as the “Danube-bank-runway” or “road on the stream”. To take a closer look at this relationship between the road and the Danube, we board a liner.

The ship is our steadily moving camera platform. The camera is pointed sideways into the distance and records the passing landscape. This opens up new views of the integration of the traffic routes and infrastructure buildings in the Wachau. From our position on the ship, the road is often only visible due to the moving cars. The retaining walls of the road were made of local stone as irregularly layered masonry with narrow joints. “Due to the types of stone used, a colour tone of the walls was achieved that blends harmoniously into the landscape and in no way contrasts with the old vineyard walls” (Die niederösterreichische Illustrierte, September 1958, p.5). The greening of the riverbank is another component of the landscape integration of the road. Seen from the river perspective, the planting of the stone berms with white willow, silver poplar, sea-buckthorn, and grey alder is most noticeable.

Designed as a tourist route in the 1950s, the Wachau Road passes through a variety of landscapes. On the route between Emmersdorf and Krems, one drives through sections with open views of the Danube, dense riparian forests or orchards and vineyards. Initially, the road was designed for a maximum speed of 60 km/h, thus the landscape could be appreciated from the car. Today, cars rush past us at speeds of 100 km/h as we walk from Aggsbach-Markt to Spitz and explore the Wachau region at the time of the apricot blossom. A car brakes next to us and stops at the verge. The driver quickly takes a few photos of the blossoming trees and continues the journey. We, in contrast, continue our tour at walking pace and listen to the chirping of the birds, the buzzing of the bees and have a chat with the winegrowers. From Spitz to Krems, we and many other visitors use the free bus service offered by the Wachau municipalities during the apricot blossom.

We came across this request on a hand-drawn preliminary design by the garden architects Viktor Mödlhammer and Josef Oskar Wladar from 1957 in the course of our research in the archives of the Lower Austrian Road Administration in Krems. We spent a whole day at the road maintenance department sighting the planning documents for the new construction of the Wachau Road in the 1950s. In about 20 folders, we discovered technical plans for the road alignment, cross-sections, standard profiles, and technical reports. We were particularly excited to find the preliminary landscape design, as it impressively illustrates the design approach and integration of the existing landscape into the road project.

Architect Herbert Ursprunger was responsible for the landscape design of the Wachaustrasse in the 1950s. We had the opportunity to interview him and learn about the challenges of planting willows (Salix) along the river bank as part of the road construction. In addition to information and anecdotes about the development of the Wachaustrasse, we also heard about his own role, planning principles and design criteria for the roadside revegation planning. We received photos from his private collection, which he took himself during and after the construction work. The interview and photos provide us with important starting points for our road studies.