Jakobsweg Osttirol

At a glance

• Start / Finish: Lienz (East Tyrol) / state border Arnbach–Winnebach (Prato alla Drava, South Tyrol)
• Length: 47.6 km
• Duration: 2–3 days
• Elevation: ↗ 1,391 m / ↘ 950 m
• Highest point: around 1,310 m (Tessenberg above Strassen)
• Difficulty: technically easy, but with real climbs for a valley route
• Waymarking: signposts reading „Jakobsweg Tirol", partly double-marked
• Responsible body: Tourismusverband Osttirol (trail maintenance), Jakobsgemeinschaft Tirol (pilgrim passport, Diocese of Innsbruck)
• Connection east: Jakobsweg Kärnten (arrives in Lienz)
• Connection west: Jakobsweg Südtirol (begins exactly at the border at Winnebach)
• Best time: May to October

Overview

The Jakobsweg Osttirol is the hinge between two long routes — and it doesn't behave like one. Instead of reeling off the 47.6 kilometers from Lienz to the border flat along the Drau cycle path, it climbs behind the Lienzer Klause onto the high terrace above the valley and stays there: Assling, St. Justina, Anras, Strassen, Tessenberg. That costs 1,391 meters of ascent in a valley that itself never rises above 1,100 meters, and it gives you what the riverbank lacks — hamlets with churches older than most cities, and the view across to the Villgraten Mountains and the Sexten Dolomites.

The punchline of this route is a single sheet of parchment: in 769 Duke Tassilo III grants Abbot Atto the place „India" — Innichen — and in the same charter names the „rivolum montis Anarasi", the stream on the mountain of Anras. Halfway along, you walk through a village that shares its birth certificate with your destination. On the third day you cross a state border at Arnbach that nobody can hear: Italy begins, the Puster Valley dialect stays.

Other names

The Tourismusverband Osttirol calls the route Osttiroler Jakobsweg or Jakobsweg Osttirol and counts it in five stages from Nikolsdorf on the Carinthian border. The signposts read Jakobsweg Tirol, because this section formally belongs to the Tyrolean network; historically it is the East Tyrolean section of the Südösterreichischer Jakobsweg, which runs from Thal near Graz through Slovenia, Carinthia and East Tyrol to South Tyrol. On the Italian side the border village is Prato alla Drava, the next village San Candido.

At Camino Ninja the route starts in Lienz, because the stretch Nikolsdorf–Lienz belongs to our Jakobsweg Kärnten — we count the kilometers only once. And it ends at the border, because that is exactly where the official Südtiroler Jakobsweg begins, at Winnebach. That is our system, not the tourist board's, but it has one advantage: every route on our map has exactly one beginning and one end, and the hand-over sits where the operators draw it too.

Ideal for — and not so much for

This route is ideal if you have little time and an appetite for density. In two to three days you get a Roman town on the doorstep, a charter from 769, a fresco from 1513, a church of St. James, a restored castle with a museum and a state border — in less than fifty kilometers. It works as a weekend walk with train access in Lienz, as a first taste of pilgrimage, and as the link for everyone coming from Carinthia who wants to carry on into South Tyrol.

Honestly, though, it is not for you if you expect hostels like in Spain: there are no pilgrim hostels in the narrower sense here, you sleep in inns or guesthouses and pay normal room rates. Nor is it for you if „valley walk" means „flat" to you — the route deliberately climbs up and back down. And if you are looking for solitude, know this: the Puster Valley is inhabited, farmed, and has a main road and a railway on the valley floor. It is quiet up in the hamlets, not everywhere.

Route & landscape

You start in Lienz at 673 meters, in the basin where the Isel flows into the Drau and where, four kilometers to the east, lie the ruins of Aguntum, the only Roman town in Tyrol. Via Amlach you reach the Lienzer Klause, the narrows where the Drau, road and railway have to share the valley, then climb steeply to Thal and Assling. From here the route stays high: past St. Justina, where a huge St. Christopher of 1513 was painted on the outside of the tower so that travelers could see him from the valley, on to Anras with its Pfleghaus, from which the bishops of Brixen once administered their East Tyrolean lands, and through the hamlets of Abfaltersbach to Strassen. Below on the left, the valley; above on the right, the Villgraten Mountains.

The second part opens to the south. At Strassen — the name simply means „on the road", and a Roman milestone stands in front of the town hall — the route crosses Tessenberg, the highest point of the walk, and passes beneath Heinfels Castle to Sillian, the main town of the upper Puster Valley. The last kilometers via Arnbach are the flattest stretch of the whole route. At the state border before Winnebach it ends; the Sexten Dolomites now stand to the south, and the Drau, which you have walked against for two days, rises only a few kilometers farther west at the Toblacher Feld.

Stages, terrain & difficulty

Technically the route is easy: farm tracks, forest roads, field paths, short stretches of asphalt — nowhere do you need your hands. What is demanding is the elevation of the first two days: 1,391 meters of ascent over 47.6 kilometers is a lot for a valley, and the climb from the Klause to Assling drags on. The tourist board divides the route from Nikolsdorf into five stages; we count from Lienz to the border and calibrate the kilometers exactly to the route length of 47.6 km.

1. Lienz – Lienzer Klause – Assling (14.4 km) — flat along the Drau, then the steep climb onto the high terrace.
2. Assling – St. Justina – Anras – Strassen (18.7 km) — the high-route day with the most churches and the milestone at the finish.
3. Strassen – Tessenberg – Heinfels – Sillian – Arnbach – Winnebach (14.5 km) — over the highest point, under the castle, almost level to the border.

If you only have two days, split it into Lienz–Abfaltersbach (26.2 km) and Abfaltersbach–Winnebach (21.4 km). And a word about the end: nobody sleeps at the border itself — either you stay in Sillian or Winnebach, or you walk the five kilometers on to Innichen, which already belong to the first stage of the Jakobsweg Südtirol. The Drautalbahn stops in Thal, Abfaltersbach, Sillian and Innichen; you can shorten or extend any day.

A charter of 769 names two places on this route

At the beginning of this route, dated 769, stands not a church but a donation. Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria grants Abbot Atto of Scharnitz the place „India" together with the „Campo Gelau", the Toblacher Feld, bounded by the stream at Taisten in the west and „the Slavic border" in the east — as a base for the mission to the Slavs. „India" became Innichen, the first village beyond your destination. And the same charter names the „rivolum montis Anarasi", the stream on the mountain of Anras, in the middle of your second stage. One parchment, two waypoints: Anras celebrated its 1,250th birthday in 2019, Innichen in the same year.

The border Tassilo meant was a language border: after the Battle of Aguntum in 610, Slavs had advanced into the Lienz basin, and Innichen was founded as a mission post facing east. You walk this old frontier line in reverse — from the once Slavic east into the Bavarian west. What remains are no pilgrims' names: no medieval Santiago pilgrim from East Tyrol is recorded by name, no hospice in the upper Puster Valley is documented, and the collegiate church of Innichen is dedicated to Candidus and Corbinian, not to James. What remains are stones and patron saints. The village name Strassen, the Roman milestone in front of it, the first mention of the village on February 6, 1453 as „Kapelle zum hl. Jakobus in Messensee", and the parish church of St. James the Greater that still stands there — four layers of the same road within five hundred meters.

Highlights along the way

• Aguntum near Dölsach — the Municipium Claudium Aguntum, Tyrol's only Roman town, destroyed in 610; 30,000 m² of excavations and a museum, four kilometers east of Lienz. Worth a day before you start.
• St. Andrä in Lienz — consecrated in 1204, Gothicized from 1430 by the Görz masons' lodge; tomb slabs for Count Leonhard of Görz († 1500) and the Egger-Lienz memorial chapel by Clemens Holzmeister (1924/25).
• Lienzer Klause — the narrows through which everything has squeezed since Roman times: river, road, railway, and you.
• St. Justina above Assling — church on a rocky knoll, winged altar by Friedrich Pacher, and on the outside of the tower the St. Christopher of 1513 with a line of Arabic script read as „Glück Glück Glück".
• Anras — recorded in 769 as „rivolum montis Anarasi", 1,250th anniversary in 2019; the Pfleghaus was the administrative seat of the bishops of Brixen.
• Strassen — a Roman milestone in front of the town hall and right beside it the parish church of St. James the Greater, the only St. James dedication directly on the route.
• Heinfels Castle — first documented in 1243, a Görz stronghold from about 1275, restored 2016–2020 for around eight million euros, a museum since 2020.
• Sillian — market rights since June 29, 1469 granted by Count Leonhard of Görz, parish church of 1431, and on the market square the only surviving pillory column in East Tyrol.
• The state border at Arnbach/Winnebach — a state border since 1920, a line on the map since Schengen. The dialect doesn't change.

How pilgrims reach this trail

The obvious approach comes from the east: the Jakobsweg Kärnten runs 260.5 kilometers from Dravograd on the Slovenian border through the Jauntal, Rosental and Drau valleys via Villach and Spittal to Oberdrauburg and on to Lienz — the last fourteen kilometers of it already in East Tyrol. If you arrive that way, you carry straight on in Lienz without a break: same river, same valley, only the signposts change from the yellow Carinthian shell to „Jakobsweg Tirol".

If you don't arrive on foot, you come by train. Lienz is on the Drautalbahn, reached directly from Villach and Spittal-Millstättersee, and from the north via Salzburg and Schwarzach. Because the train also stops in Thal, Abfaltersbach and Sillian, you can walk the route in day sections from a base in Lienz or Innichen.

Carrying on?

At the border at Winnebach this route does not end, it is handed over — to the meter: that is where the official Jakobsweg Südtirol begins, 295.4 kilometers via Innichen, Toblach, Bruneck and Neustift Abbey, then down the Eisack valley, over the Ritten plateau to Bolzano, via Eppan and Tisens to Algund and through the Vinschgau to the Abbey of St. John in Müstair, Switzerland. There the Jakobsweg Graubünden takes over and leads via the Ofen Pass and Chur to the Oberalp Pass.

If you would rather head north, branch off at Neustift Abbey onto the Jakobsweg Brenner: 94.8 kilometers via Sterzing and the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck, where the Jakobsweg Österreich continues toward the Arlberg and Rankweil. Either way: from Winnebach you are on the European network that runs without interruption all the way to Santiago de Compostela.

Preparation & practicalities

The season runs from May to October; snow can lie on the high paths above Assling and Tessenberg well into May. In high summer the hamlets are small and fountains are not guaranteed — carry water. You sleep in inns, guesthouses and private rooms; there are no classic pilgrim hostels with dormitories on this section. Book ahead in high season, especially in Sillian and Innichen. Gaps like these are planned away beforehand, not on the road — easiest directly in the Camino Ninja app, where you put your stages together and plan suitable accommodation right along with them.

As on all Austrian Ways of St. James, you need a pilgrim passport (Credencial) to receive the Compostela in Santiago at the end. For Tyrol it is issued by the Jakobsgemeinschaft Tirol, Domplatz 7 in Innsbruck — membership 16 € a year, office open Wednesdays 10:00–11:30 (as of September 2026); order it in advance so it reaches you before you set off. Stamps are available at parish offices, inns and tourist offices, but don't count on every church being open.

You are crossing a state border: put your ID in your pack, even if nobody is standing at Arnbach. Between Sillian and Winnebach your phone likes to switch itself to the Italian network — no problem with EU roaming, but good to know if you need offline maps.

What this trail costs

Reckon with 70 to 100 euros per day if you sleep in inns and eat one hot meal (as of September 2026). A room with breakfast in a guesthouse or inn in the Puster Valley usually costs 45 to 70 euros per person, hotels rather 80 to 120 euros; in Innichen on the Italian side you pay noticeably more in high season than in Sillian or Abfaltersbach. Lunch in an inn 12 to 20 euros, dinner 18 to 30 euros.

Add the small items: 16 euros annual membership for the pilgrim passport of the Jakobsgemeinschaft Tirol, the train back from Innichen to Lienz at around 13 to 18 euros, and admission to the Aguntum museum and Heinfels Castle in the usual range of regional museums. Both countries use the euro; card payment is widespread, but not everywhere in small inns — a little cash does no harm.

Getting there

To the start (Lienz): Lienz has a station on the Drautalbahn. From Austria you come via Spittal-Millstättersee and Villach, from Germany via Salzburg and the Tauern. By car the B100 runs through the Drau valley; if you leave the car, you collect it at the end by train.

From the finish (Winnebach/Innichen): The border has no station, but Sillian (7 km back) and Innichen (5 km on) do — both on the Pustertalbahn, which has run through again between Lienz and Innichen since February 1, 2020. Westward it continues via Bruneck to Franzensfeste and onto the Brenner line toward Bolzano or Innsbruck.

• Trains Austria: oebb.at — Drautalbahn Villach – Spittal – Lienz – Sillian – Innichen
• Trains South Tyrol: suedtirolmobil.info — Pustertalbahn Innichen – Bruneck – Franzensfeste
• Stations on the route: Lienz, Thal-Assling, Abfaltersbach, Sillian, Innichen — every stage can be shortened or extended
• Nearest airports: Innsbruck, Salzburg, Venice/Treviso (via Franzensfeste)