Austria · Steiermark · Graz
Gries, Graz — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Gries is the fifth district of Graz, its ground marked by the Karlauerkirche, the Welsche Kirche and the Elisabethinenkloster.
About Gries
Where to stay in Gries
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Gries is the plainest place to sleep in Graz. The district runs to workaday streets rather than to the show-front of the old centre, which keeps the beds plainer and puts the Elisabethinenkloster, the Welsche Kirche and a run of parish churches within an easy walk of most addresses. One detail shapes the choice.
Graz's red-light district lies inside Gries, so anyone wanting a quiet street should read the address closely before booking.
About Gries
What are the main landmarks in Gries?
St. Lukas, the Karlauerkirche and the Welsche Kirche give Gries three very different churches, and the Elisabethinenkirche adds a fourth beside the Elisabethinenkloster that shares its name. The Dominikanerkloster is a ghost. Its buildings survive as a former monastery rather than a working one, while the Altersheimkirche and Kirche Don Bosco Graz keep to the quieter side of the district.
Kunstgarten Graz is the outlier: an open-air garden of art rather than architecture.
What is the history of Gries?
Gries carries its history in religious houses. The Dominikanerkloster stands as a former monastery, the Elisabethinenkloster as an order's foundation that still names the church beside it, and the Karlauerkirche belongs to the same long ecclesiastical layer running under the fifth district of Graz. No founding year is on record.
What arrived later shows in the dedications, and Kirche Don Bosco Graz and St. Lukas belong to a different generation of parish building from the cloisters.
Where is Gries?
Gries forms the fifth district of Graz, a spread of plain streets threaded between the Karlauerkirche, the Welsche Kirche and the Kunstgarten Graz.
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More areas in Graz
Updated September 2026