The local history museum covers Bad Gastein's remarkable career as a 19th-century resort, including its medical radon-cure history, its royal visitors, and the grand hotel era. It occupies one of the town's older buildings near the centre. Modest in size but genuinely interesting if you want to understand why this unusual place exists.
The exhibits trace the valley's history from its first mention as a healing spa in the 12th century through the 19th-century golden age, when visits from Empress Elisabeth, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and other European royalty turned Bad Gastein into one of the continent's most fashionable resorts. There are photographs of the now-shuttered grand hotels in their prime, medical instruments from the radon cure era, and artefacts from the salt trade that once made the valley prosperous.