Austria’s first Cultural Village of Europe

Kirchheim im Innkreis (Upper Austria) will be Austria’s first Cultural Village of Europe.

In 2003 Graz (Styria) was the first city (of Austria) designated as the European Capital of Culture; Linz (Upper Austria) will be the European Capital of Culture in 2009 (together with Vilnius, Lithuania). Further cities (or at least countries) have been selected until 2019 – there will be no other Austrian city among them.

In 1999 eleven rural communities across Europe signed a "Charter of the villages" and since then proclaim a European VILLAGE of Culture in addition to the European CITY of Culture.

The municipality of Kirchheim im Innkreis was the first Austrian village which joined the Foundation of Cultural Villages of Europe (2000) (As of today there is one other Austrian village member of the foundation: the neighbouring Aurolzmünster, 12 km north-easterly of Kirchheim).

2010 Kirchheim will be the official Cultural Village of Europe.

Kirchheim im Innkreis is located 15 driving minutes to the west of Ried im Innkreis, Upper Austria.
It includes 233 buildings, distributed among the populated places of Ampfenham, Buch, Edt, Federnberg, Grub, Kirchheim, Kraxenberg, Ramerding, Rödham and Schacher.
Population: 701 (as of 2006).

Kirchheim is smaller than (Bad) Kleinkirchheim (the German klein means small or little in English, so one could think of “Little Kirchheim” being smaller than Kirchheim…) and smaller than Grosskirchheim (the German gross means big in English); there are another 12 Kirchheims within the GeoNames.org database (11 in Germany and 1 in France).