The pretty European town so lovely China built an exact replica 4,500 miles away

This pretty town, found in the Austrian state of Upper Austria and declared as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites in 1997, was deemed so lovely that China decided to plan and build a replica in 2011.

Tourists are told that the Austrian town of Hallstatt is home to the “world’s oldest pipeline”, constructed 400 years ago from 13,000 hollowed-out trees.

The town’s salt mine is also the oldest working in the world, located within the Northern Limestone Alps. It comprises 21 levels and several smaller shafts ranging from 514 metres above sea level to an elevation of 1,267 metres.

However, the town has been struggling with overtourism over the past few years, particularly after social media images captioned “the most Instagrammable town in the world” went viral in Eastern and Southeast Asia.

Hallstatt became popular among East Asian tourists in 2006 when it was featured on a South Korean TV show, according to The Times. The town is also said to have visual similarities to the city in Disney’s Frozen.

The fame of this village is demonstrated by the fact that China liked Hallstatt so much that it decided to build its own version. Since 2011, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, within the city of Huizhou, exists a duplicate Hallstatt.

Instead of being a village focused on tourism, the Chinese version acts as a high-end residential project. According to Vagabond Journey in 2012, recordings of bird songs were played through hidden speakers, the town centre fountain was an identical match and the soundtrack of the Sound of Music was played on a loop.

The replica cost an estimated £724 million in modern terms. It was conceived by a Chinese mining tycoon and backed by Minmetals Land Inc, according to Business Insider in 2012.

The replica, which bears the same name as the original town, opened amid some controversy, due to the fact that natives in the Austrian town had not initially been made aware that their historic buildings and streets were being ripped off. According to AP, it was only revealed in 2011 when a Chinese visitor to the Austrian town let word of the project slip.

The extent of displeasure following China’s move is evident on the town’s official website, where in its first introduction it writes: “The village Hallstatt is such an unbelievably spectacular place that even the Chinese have created a copy of the ancient salt mine village. But only in the original will you discover this truly unique culture with such a history all in a breath-taking mountain setting”.

While lacking in the history, mountains, lake size and tradition, the Chinese Hallstatt has the option to expand, which the Austrian version does not.

To get to the Austrian town, one can travel by car from the city of Salzburg which takes around an hour and 10 minutes, home to the Sound of Music. Vienna is also a three-hour drive from Hallstatt. If arriving by public transport, the Halstatt station is one stop before Obertraun and south of Bad Ischl. Once off the train, one can take the ferry across the lake to Hallstatt.

If visiting the Chinese version, one can get to the city of Huizhou via the airport 16 miles east, which has direct flights to Beijing, Xi’an and Hangzhou.

This was not the first time that a Western-style development was built in China: Shanghai has its Thames Town and Taizhou has Oriental Windsor Village.