Schärding

Schärding stands on the Inn below a fortified rock, at a crossing used by traders travelling along the river. First recorded as Scardinga in 804, it became a market centre whose commerce included salt, timber, wine and cloth. The town passed between Bavarian and Austrian rulers in the fourteenth century; the Peace of Schärding in 1369 returned it to Bavaria. Duke Louis the Bearded strengthened its gates, moat and walls between 1429 and 1436.

Reformation ideas reached the town in the sixteenth century. The preacher Leonhard Kaiser, a student of Martin Luther, was arrested and burned at Schärding in 1527. The Peace of Teschen transferred the Innviertel to the Habsburgs in 1779, turning the Inn into a border and ending the town's salt trade. Schärding burned during the Napoleonic wars in 1809; it briefly returned to Bavaria before passing back to Austria in 1816.