Austria lies in the eastern Alps and along the Danube, where the river leaves the mountains for the Pannonian plain and old trade routes between the Baltic, Italy and the Balkans cross. Neanderthals used the Gudenus Cave, Ice Age hunters carved the Venus of Willendorf, and the salt mines of Hallstatt gave their name to the Early Iron Age of central Europe.

Rome made the Alpine lands the provinces of Noricum, Raetia and Pannonia, with legionary fortresses at Carnuntum and Vindobona on the Danube. After the migrations Bavarians and Slavs settled the land, and the Frankish march on the Danube passed to the Babenbergs, whose land is first recorded as Ostarrîchi in 996. Raised to a duchy in 1156, Austria fell to the Habsburgs after the Battle on the Marchfeld in 1278.

For more than six centuries the Habsburgs ruled Austria. They held the imperial crown almost without a break from 1438 to 1806, won Bohemia and Hungary, withstood two Ottoman sieges of Vienna and built a multinational monarchy, the Austrian Empire from 1804 and Austria-Hungary from 1867. After its collapse in 1918 came the First Republic, dictatorship, annexation to Nazi Germany and four-power occupation. The State Treaty and permanent neutrality of 1955 opened the Second Republic, a member of the European Union since 1995.

Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.