Discover Seewinkel National Park at Lake Neusiedl Austria
During our visit to Neusiedlersee in beautiful Burgenland Austria, we enjoyed an amazing tour by horse-drawn carriage around the Seewinkel National Park - a nature lover’s paradise!
The beautiful Seewinkel National Park, Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland, Austria - source: Winekeller
Austria’s Burgenland wine region has so much to offer as a tourist destination and the amazing UNESCO World Heritage site, Lake Neusiedl - or Neusiedlersee - is at its very heart. A very popular holiday destination for Austrians, but little known outside Austria, it boasts an incredible landscape and is home to many species of rare and migratory birds, making it a huge attraction for nature lovers.
A key attraction at Neusiedlersee is the Seewinkel National Park, home to many unique habitats and a nature-lover’s paradise - what better way to discover it than by horse-drawn carriage, learning about the park’s incredible nature as well as tasting some local wines!
Read all about our experience exploring the beautiful Lake Neusiedl-Seewinkel National Park below and if your’e inspired to see if it for yourself, then perhaps contact us and let us help you plan your own wine travel there!
Our horse & carriage tour around the stunning Seewinkel National Park - Source: Winekeller
About Lake Neusiedl
Lake Neusiedl’s importance as a wetland habitat for migratory birds earned Lake Neusiedl a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list as a protected cultural landscape and its heavy reed growth along the lake’s shores supports significant wildlife.
In addition to nature lovers, Lake Neusiedl attracts sports enthusiasts - especially cycling and water sports and in the winter, when the lake freezes over, lovers of ice skating - as well as culture fans, with its significant musical events, art galleries and museums!
The endless vineyards all around the lake and superb gastronomy here, along with the wonderful hospitality, idyllic villages and wealth of excellent restaurants and local taverns - or heurige -make Lake Neusiedl an incredible wine tourism destination!
Read about our cycling tour around Lake Neusiedl!
Neusiedlerseee wine
The vineyards around Lake Neusiedl form two Burgenland wine regions: the Neusiedlersee sub-region on the northern and eastern sides of the lake and the Leithaberg sub-region, one of the oldest wine regions in the world, which lies on the western shores.
The Neusiedlersee sub-region is home to delicious, world-class and world-famous sweet wines, made from botrytis (noble rot) grapes, which thrive in this unique micro-climate around Lake Neusiedl.
Seewinkel sweet wines
The Seewinkel region lies at the south-eastern end of Lake Neusiedl and is the most southerly part of the Neusiedlersee winegrowing region, with the village of Illmitz at its core. The presence of lots of small lakes and ponds here, lots of ripening sunshine and the damp, autumn mists make this superb terroir for botrytis (noble rot) grapes to flourish, which produce premium ‘Beerenauslese’ and ‘Trockenbeerenauslese’ sweet wines. The soils in this unique region are alternatively sand and gravel, allowing for the production of a varied range of wines, not just limited to sweet wines, including also some excellent dry white wines.
These excellent wines, made predominantly from Welschriesling grapes as well as Chardonnay, Muskateller, Sauvignon Blanc, Traminer, Pinot Blanc, Zweigelt and Scheurebe, have helped to put the Seewinkel region of Neusiedlersee and Burgenland on the world map - but there’s much more to this region than wine!
About the Lake Neusiedl -Seewinkel National Park
Seewinkel National Park was formed in 1993 and today covers a protected area of some 300 sqkm, spanning 2 countries - Austria and Hungary. 50% of the area is a designated nature reserve and as such isn’t open to the public, but the remaining area is accessible and is split into 5 different conservation zones, with 13 separate lookout points
The Austrian National Park information centre is located just north of the village of Illmitz, where you can investigate guided tours or buy maps and guides to explore the park yourself.
However you decide to explore the park, there is so much to discover, including a wide variety of animals and spectacular landscapes.
Entering the Lake Neusiedl - Seewinkel National Park - Source: Winekeller
The birds and other animals at Seewinkel National Park
The park is perhaps most famous for its huge variety of bird species, being an important stopover for migratory birds on their annual journeys to and from Africa. In addition many species of birds have significant breeding populations here.
Note that April and May, or August and September are considered the bird migration highlights and large flocks of geese can be seen in late autumn and winter. In addition to birds you can see grey cattle, water buffalos, horses, and the popular white donkeys.
Enjoy the unique landscapes
The Seewinkel National Park is also known for its unique landscape and diverse habitats. The huge, shallow Lake Neusiedl is surrounded by broad reed beds, in part up to 5kms wide and then there are the unique salt lakes in Seewinkel, dotted among the meadows and pastureland. These extremely rare bodies of water dry out periodically and are a habitat for equally rare and specially adapted plants and animals. Southwest of Illmitz, there is a lake dam, a sand wall up to 2 m high and up to 25 m wide, which extends some 25 km and provides a habitat which is home to very unique fauna and flora.
Our experience of Seewinkel National Park - by horse-drawn carriage
What better way to experience the wonders of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Neusiedl and its spectacular Seewinkel National Park, than by horse-drawn carriage? No motor, just the gentle rhythm and motion of 2 magnificent horses and the expert knowledge of a coach person/guide to tell us everything we thought we wanted to know and more about the park and the incredible nature here.
An incredible way to discover and experience the Seewinkel National Park - Source: Winekeller
‘Vinzenhof Gangl’ horse drawn-carriage rides
Vinzenhof Gangl is a 3rd generation family business providing horse-drawn carriage rides through and around the beautiful Seewinkel National Park. Based in Illmitz, Vinzenhof Gangl ‘Kutschenfahrten’ (horse drawn-carriage rides) are well known in the region - for their top class tours, their hospitality and their beautiful horses. The family owns and looks after 40 horses today and wins many awards for horse carriage driving.
Vinzenhof Gangl offers a variety of different tours for groups of 1-35 people. We enjoyed a full afternoon tour of the Seewinkel National Park, where our ‘coach man’ Zenz both educated and entertained us! We rode across the flat meadows and pastures of the park and vineyards and round the beautiful lakes, which were abundant with wildlife; we marvelled at the wild geese, storks and many other birds and we loved seeing the famous white donkeys on the ‘Sandeck’ from the lookout tower - a former Hungarian watchtower.
A highlight of the tour was a surprise picnic, where we enjoyed some delicious, traditional food and sampled some of the family’s excellent wines! We then continued our wine tasting as we returned back to base - the weather had turned and it began to pour with rain, but no matter, the carriage cover kept us dry and the lovely wines sustained us!
We can thoroughly recommend a Vinzenhof Gangl horse-drawn carriage tour of the Seewinkel National Park as well as a bite to eat and drink afterwards in the family’s ‘Heuriger’ - which, if the food and wine we enjoyed on our picnic is anything to go by, is a sure bet too!
Contact Vinzenhof Gangl for more information.
Useful information for visiting to Lake Neusiedl and Seewinkel National Park:
Getting to Lake Neusiedl:
Neusiedl am See is the most accessible place to reach on Lake Neusiedl and is situated just off the A4 motorway, roughly 1-hour’s drive from Vienna. Getting there by train is just as easy, with frequent direct services to the Neusiedl am See train station.
Illmitz in the centre of the Seewinkel National Park is located around the lake, south-east of Neusiedl am See.
Note that a regular passenger/cycle ferry runs between Mörbisch am See on the south-western side of Lake Neusiedl across to Illmitz.
Wineries in Illmitz
Top Illmitz wineries include Weingut Kracher (which also offers excellent accommodation) and Weingut Tschida.
Tips for visiting Seewinkel National Park
See here for tips for visiting Neusiedlersee-Seewinkel National Park.
Tips for visiting Lake Neusiedl - Neusiedlersee
Read all about Lake Neusiedl here - with our personal recommendations about where to go and what to do!
For more information about planning a trip to Lake Neusiedl, visit the official Neusiedlersee website.
Watch the video here:
Conclusion - our personal highlights
We absolutely loved our day in the Seewinkel National Park and we would highly recommend taking time to experience it when you’re in the Lake Neusiedl area - it’s a real unspoilt, hidden gem! It’s so beautiful and peaceful and the wildlife and scenery is spectacular. We can highly recommend exploring by ‘Kutschenfahrt’ - or horse-drawn carriage - it was an amazing experience!
