Wander & Wonder Travel Newsletter

Hey StoryHunter

For me, summer means light; long days, warm evenings and darkness kept at bay.

And one city, that truly appreciates this, is Graz.

Right now, the Austrian city is hosting its major summer music festival, and this year’s theme is “light” – it fills the palace halls, spills across Renaissance courtyards and turns the city into something almost theatrical.

Graz is old, but playful.

Beautiful, but slightly strange.

It’s where the lights hit both the red-tiled roofs and Renaissance courtyards, while also dancing on a blue building, which resembles an alien creature by the river.

Yeah, it sounds… special.

And that’s exactly why Graz belongs on your summer bucket list.

Read on to learn about:

🏰 The world’s largest armoury

🌀 The weird double staircase
🛝 The world's highest slide (inside a mountain)

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Destination of the Week

What’s truly fascinating about Graz is that it never quite picked a side.

For over 500 years, this was a Habsburg stronghold - it belonged to one of Europe's most powerful royal dynasties.

The Old Town still shows it: Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance courtyards, and Baroque façades packed into one of Central Europe's best-preserved historic centers.

Then there's the Kunsthaus Graz, nicknamed "the Friendly Alien" - a bulging blue structure that looks like an alien that landed in the city by mistake.

Locals hated it at first.

Now it's one of the country's most photographed buildings.

That's Graz in one sentence: centuries of Habsburg history, making room for whatever comes next.

Don't Miss

Step inside the Styrian Armoury, and Graz’s elegant streets suddenly reveal a much darker past.

Across four floors, 32,000 items - swords, muskets, cannons and suits of armour - stand packed together.

It’s not a new museum; the building has always served as a real arsenal, and it has been supplying soldiers during centuries of conflict with the Ottoman Empire.

It’s the world’s largest historic armoury, and enough to equip a small army.

So if one day you see the Austrians running to this building, you know trouble is on the way!

Did You Know?

Tucked inside the Grazer Burg is one of the city's strangest architectural tricks: a double spiral staircase, built in 1499.

This clever design means two people can use the stairs at the same time, going in opposite directions, without ever crossing paths.

It’s a fascinating optical illusion and a remarkable feat of engineering for its time.

Locals nicknamed it the "stairs of reconciliation" - even if you go your separate ways, you will eventually come back together.

The Trendy Traveler Tip

If you need a quick thrill while visiting Graz, head for the fortified hill Schlossberg.

But skip the funicular.

Instead, take a much stranger way down.

The Schlossbergrutsche - known simply as The Slide - drops you 64 meters through the belly of the mountain, twisting through 175 degrees of turns at speeds up to 30 km/h.

It's billed as the highest underground slide in the world.

The ride lasts under a minute.

You'll want to do it twice.