Bad Radkersburg

Infobox Ort in Österreich
Art = Stadt
Name = Bad Radkersburg
Wappen =
lat_deg = 46 | lat_min = 41 | lat_sec = 23
lon_deg = 15 | lon_min = 59 | lon_sec = 19
Lageplan =
Bundesland = Steiermark
Bezirk = Radkersburg
Höhe = 209
Fläche = 2.17
Einwohner = 1442
Stand = 2005-12-31
PLZ = 8490
Vorwahl = 03476
Kfz = RA
Gemeindekennziffer = 61513
NUTS = AT224
Straße = Hauptplatz 1
Website = [http://www.badradkersburg.org www.badradkersburg.org]
Bürgermeister = Peter Merlini
Partei = BBR
Gemeinderatanzahl = 15
Gemeinderat = 5 ÖVP, 5 BBR, 4 SPÖ, 1 Grüne
Wahljahr = 2005

Bad Radkersburg (Slovenian "Radgona") is a city in the southeast of the Austrian state of Styria and capital of the district of Radkersburg. It is located at an elevation of 208 m and covers an area of 2.17 km². Its population amounts to about 1,940 people. On the other side of the river Mura in Slovenia lies its twin city Gornja Radgona.

Bad Radkersburg is a spa sporting a thermal spring with a temperature of 80 °C. This and the longest sunshine duration in Austria make the town an attractive site of tourism with 100,000 stays per year.

History

It is not known when Radkersburg was first settled or where the first settlement was located. It is also not known when Radkersburg fell under princely territorial rule. Most likely, Radkersburg originally did not belong to the Duke of Styria, but to an aristocrat to whom it had been given by the king. Contemporary research suggests that Radkersburg was not founded by Ottokar II of Bohemia (1232-1278), but by Albert I of Habsburg (1255-1308). The appearance of the city today is apparently based on a precise plan. Radkersburg was surrounded by a wall with towers in the end of the 13th century. It was elevated to an imperial fortress in 1582 by the Reichstag of Augsburg. Oberradkersburg (Gornja Radgona), on the other side of the Mur river, has been a part of Slovenia since 1919. The bridge across the Mur was reopened on October 12, 1969 which led to rapprochement between Austria and Yugoslavia. A thermal spring was made accessible in 1978, soon followed by an extension to the bathing site.

Notable residents

* Carl I. Ferdinand Count of Montenari (*1632), austrian general
*Franz Leopold von Nádasdy (1708-1783), military leader
*Leopold Vietoris (1891-2002), mathematician
*Wolfgang Fasching (born 1967), extreme sportsman
*Aribert Heim (born 1914), Nazi war criminal
*Peter Luttenberger (born 1972), cyclist

Notable people living in the town

* Dietrich Kittner

ister Cities & Twin Cities

* - Varaždin, Croatia
* - Lenti, Hungary