Dornbirn Online

Dornbirn is the largest city in the Austrian State of Vorarlberg, as well as its business and economic centre. With its 45,650 inhabitants (2006) Dornbirn is a friendly, lively smaller city which has never really lost its cozy traditional rustic character.
Dornbirn benefits from its favourable location among diverse cultural and natural settings in the four-countries area of Austria, the Principality of Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Germany.
One of the most enjoyable places in Vorarlberg – especially from an architectural standpoint – is the Dornbirn Market Square. Emphasising three centuries of varied building styles, it has become a vibrant stage and meeting place for local public life.

It is the Vorarlberg Trade Fair City, has the western headquarters of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, hosts the natural history museum “inatura”, and boast a wide variety of educational institutions, including Vorarlberg’s first Technical College, with its five areas of academic study. Dornbirn was at the heart of the Vorarlberg textile industry, which experienced a tremendous boom during the first half of the 19th century, and whose dynamic personalities strongly influenced the style and character of the city.

Actually, Dornbirn consists of a grouping of villages at the edge of the Rhine Valley: Oberdorf, Haltlerdorf, Rohrbach, Schoren, Watzenegg, Kehlegg and, in the centre, the Lower and Upper Village Centre – called simply the “Market District” these days. Eight kilometres back up in the Alps is the mountain village of Ebnit, which also falls within the Dornbirn district administration. All of these villages look back on long traditions and interesting histories. Dornbirn was already settled during the Celtic period. It was granted a municipal charter (thanks to an  “Imperial Decree”) in 1901.