Less than 20 minutes outside of Hall in Tirol, surrounded by the gorgeous Austrian mountains, you will find a dream like world of crystal. Protected by a giant green head that spits water all year round is where you will find the Swarovski World in Wattens. A beautiful mixture of museum, art installations and theme park made for those who love beauty.
Fotostrasse went to the Swarovski World in November 2015 without knowing much about the history of the place and without knowing what to expect and we were blown away about it. We expected to see something about how Swarovski creates their crystal, something technical that could be even boring. But we loved our time there and we believe that this place is more than special.
Whenever you visit the area around Hall in Tirol, you need to visit Swarovski World. Why? We will give you five different reasons.
Opened in 1995, Swarovski World was built to celebrate 100 years of Swarovski with something that would reflect how their crystals changed the world. With a little more than 20 years of existence, the mixture of museum, theme park and art installation attracted more than 12 million visitors and all these people cannot be wrong.
There you will find something called Chambers of Wonder, magical crystal art installations that use and abuse of Swarovski does best. Inside the Swarovski World there are 16 of those chambers and they were done by some of the world’s greatest artists. People like Brian Eno, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí are responsible for these worlds of fantasy and light.
Now it’s time to mention the outdoor area! Even though we were at Swarovski World in a really cold day, we loved walking around the outdoor area and taking pictures of all the art installations around it. Our favorite one is the Crystal Cloud that is made of more than 800,000 hand mounted Swarovski crystals. Created by Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot, it opened for the public in May 2015 and it’s one of the highlights of this Swarovski World.
If you are a fan of Swarovski crystals, you will love the Swarovski World Store. There you will find almost anything ever created with Swarovski surrounded by some fascinating sound and light installations created by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office that turned the shop into a piece of art.
Finally, the last item on this list is the most tasty one. Café and Restaurant Daniels is where you need to stop and enjoy their menu. Their food is worth a trip on it’s own but there is more than the food to this restaurant. The building was also designed by Snøhetta and it was built in a way that you can enjoy the surroundings while you enjoy their amazing dishes.
Swarovski World is open daily from 09:00 until 18:30, with the last entry happening at 17:30. The entry fee starts at 19 Euros and there are special tickets for families and groups.
Getting to the Swarovski Crystal World is easy. We got there by car following the map above but it seems that the shuttle bus would be the easiest way to get there. The Swarovski Kristallwelten Shuttle goes from Innsbruck to the Swarovski World five times everyday and it cost 5 euros for one way and 9,50 euros for a return ticket.
Fotostrasse was in Hall in Tirol enjoying everything about the Hall-Wattens regions by invitation from Hall-Wattens Tourism Board. Our trip was sponsored by OBB and you should travel through Austria by train.
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