Austria States

Austria is a country of valleys: three quarters of it is mountain, and the Alps run east to west through the middle, so which state a place is in usually follows from which side of the range it is on. There are only nine states, and one of them is the capital.

The quiz: Name to place, on the map
Grouped by: Region: the east, the south and the west
In the game: 9 states

Start

What you are looking at

Nine Bundesländer. Vienna is a state as well as the capital, a small shape surrounded on every side by Lower Austria, so it has a tap area wider than its outline. Salzburg shares its name with its capital city, so here the name means the state.

Lower Austria is the largest state and Styria the second. The two on the far west, Tyrol and Vorarlberg, are the Alpine states: Vorarlberg is the smallest of the eight that are not the capital, and Tyrol is the one with the odd shape, because East Tyrol is a separate piece on the other side of Salzburg.

The groups are the three regions Statistics Austria sorts the states into: the east (Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland), the south (Carinthia and Styria) and the west (Upper Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg). The states are the districts of Austria Districts dissolved, so the borders of the two maps match exactly. The local name is a switch in the start dialog: Lower Austria is Niederösterreich, Styria is Steiermark.

How to place one

Start with the capital. Vienna is the small shape in the north east, with Lower Austria around it and Burgenland just to the south.
Follow the Danube. Upper Austria and Lower Austria are the two states along it, and the river leaves the country at Vienna's side.
Find the long thin one. Burgenland is a narrow strip along the Hungarian border, and the flattest of the nine.
Read the Alps from the west. Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg, then Carinthia and Styria to the south and east of them.

Every state, by region

East3 states: Burgenland, Lower Austria, Vienna
South2 states: Carinthia, Styria
West4 states: Salzburg, Tyrol, Upper Austria, Vorarlberg

Worked examples

Vienna

The capital that is its own state

Vienna has been a state of its own since 1922, when it was separated from Lower Austria. It is also a single district, so it answers under the same name in Austria Districts.

Vorarlberg

The small one at the end

Vorarlberg is the westernmost state, on the Lake Constance side of the Alps, and it is separated from the rest of Austria by the Arlberg. Of all nine it is the one that looks least like the others on a map.

Burgenland

The newest of them

Burgenland was part of Hungary until 1921. It is long and thin, running north to south along the border, and Eisenstadt, its capital, is the smallest state capital in Austria.

Frequently asked questions

How many states does Austria have?

Nine. They are called Bundesländer in German, and Vienna is one of them as well as the capital.

Why is Tyrol in two pieces?

East Tyrol is cut off from North Tyrol by a strip of Salzburg and by Italy's South Tyrol, and the two parts have been separate since 1919.

Is Salzburg a state or a city?

Both. The state of Salzburg is the region, and the city of Salzburg is its capital. This quiz asks for the state; the city is a district of its own in the districts quiz.

The tier below this one is Austria Districts, whose states are the groups there. For another country at this level, see Germany States.

Sources

geoBoundaries, Austria ADM2 and ADM1, the boundaries, from Statistics Austria, dissolved from the districts
States of Austria, the tiers, and the regions the states are grouped into

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