What an extraordinary place Bad Ischl is. Whether he acquired his love of the region while still in his mother’s womb, or out of gratitude for the “miracle” of his birth, or whether, like anyone clapping eyes on it for the first time, he simply found it made his spirits soar, Franz Joseph became a lifelong devotee of the Salzkammergut, and in particular of Bad Ischl, the picturesque town on the Traun river to which he and his courtly retinue journeyed every summer for more than 60 years.