Vorarlberg Rhine Valley:
Vorarlberg’s Rhine Valley, home to approx. 237,000 people, is divided into the Upper and Lower Rhine Valley and, hence, is also known as Vorarlberg’s Unterland and Oberland. The Unterland, which extends from the shore of Lake Constance to Kummenberg, covers the entire political district of Dornbirn and all areas of the district of Bregenz located in the Rhine Valley. With approx. 180,000 inhabitants, around half of all the population of Vorarlberg live in this area. Due to its small size, it is one of the most densely-populated regions in the whole of Europe. The Upper Rhine Valley is located to the south of Kummenberg.

History:
People established settlements next to Lake Constance from very early on. The first settlements on stilts go back to around 3000 BC. Celts, Romans, Alemans, the Habsburgs – they have all left their mark. In the architecture, in the way the locals see themselves. And in the language.

Lacus Brigantinus:
The Celts moved to Lake Constance around 400 BC. Their capital was Brigantion – today’s Bregenz. In a violent battle on the lake, the Romans conquered Lake Constance in 15 BC. They gave it the name Lacus Brigantinus, named after the town of Bregenz. It was also the Romans who introduced viniculture to Lake Constance.
 
Beer not wine:
Their successors were not that interested in wine: the Germanic Alemans, who conquered the area around Lake Constance from the 3rd century, were much more interested in brewing beer. This was much to the annoyance of the two Irish monks Gall and Columban, who endeavoured to convert the Alemans to Christianity in the 6th century. Gall is considered the founder of the Swiss city of St. Gallen.

The language:
The region has the Alemans to thank not only for its beer, but also its dialect which is still spoken today and which is very similar to the Alemanic “Swiss German”. The Alemans didn’t adopt the second consonant shift which was introduced into the other German-speaking regions in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Changing times:
The Alemans were followed by the Carolingians. They founded the castle of Bodema, from which the current German name 'Bodensee' derives. Later, it was the Counts of Bregenz who ruled, then the Counts of Montfort, then the Habsburgs. Their influence on the western part of the empire was fairly small. While in other parts of Austria monasteries and the aristocracy dominated cultural and economic life, in Vorarlberg it was the bourgeoisie and imaginative industrialists. From the 19th century, the Austrian Lake Constance fleet sailed under the flag of the Dual Monarchy. In 1881, Emperor Franz Joseph put into operation the first telephone of the Dual Monarchy in a textiles factory in Dornbirn.

Bodensee-Vorarlberg
In the westernmost part of Austria, ideally located in the four-country corner of Germany, Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein, lies the Bodensee-Vorarlberg region and its cities Bregenz, Dornbirn, Hohenems and Feldkirch.

It is commonly known that opposites attract, and it’s precisely this combination - this merging of opposites into something new – that makes the region on the Austrian side of Lake Constance so thrilling.

Without the mountains, the backdrop of Lake Constance wouldn’t be half as beautiful. By the same token, the view from the mountains overlooking the lake is an impressive sight. The cities of the region – Bregenz, Dornbirn, Hohenems and Feldkirch – combine rural idyll with urban flair. They are popular locations for congresses, thanks to perfectly equipped congress centers in Bregenz, Dornbirn and Feldkirch, as well as the excellent infrastructure and the varied possibilities for social programs. Convention Partner Vorarlberg is the full-service agency for congress and conference organizers from Austria and abroad, and is managed by the Bodensee-Vorarlberg Tourism Board.

Like nowhere else in Austria has the juxtaposition of old and new architecture become a matter of course, even defining the landscape. In the cities as well as the towns and villages, it is precisely the new architecture that brings to light what is close to people’s hearts in this country: aesthetics, functionality and carefully considered economy - the houses are also distinguished in their exemplary low consumption of energy.

The futurologist Matthias Horx describes the dynamic economic area as a “center of force at the heart of Europe“. International enterprises such as the underwear and lingerie manufacturer Wolford, the light specialist Zumtobel Lighting, the world market leader in elevator construction Doppelmayr, the fruit juice manufacturers Pfanner and Rauch are all headquartered here, to only name a few.

At Lake Constance, a mood of awakening is in the air - in both the economy and culture.