History of the Villach Alpine Road

Enthusiasm for the Alps grew immensely in the 19th century. The formation of mountain guide associations, the construction of alpine huts and the search for increasingly more reckless routes up to Austria’s mountains fuelled natural scientists and alpinists, closely followed by mountain-enthusiastic tourists, who associated romance and nativeness with the Alps. It comes as no surprise that the first plans for developing the Dobratsch date back to exactly this time. The initial idea rejected an alpine road in favour of a railroad track, followed closely by an elevated steel cable railway. Against the backdrop of increased motorisation, a plan for constructing the Villach Alpine Road was drawn up in 1912, but it was to take several decades before work on the road commenced.