Mur (river)

The Mur (ˈmuːɐ̯) or Mura (ˈmúːɾa; mǔːra; ˈmurɒ; Prekmurje Slovene: Müra or Möra) is a river in Central Europe rising in the Hohe Tauern national park of the Central Eastern Alps in Austria with its source being above sea level. It is a tributary of the Drava and subsequently the Danube. The Mur's total length is around . About 326 km are within the interior of Austria; 95 km flow in and around Slovenia (67 km along the borders with Austria and Croatia, 28 km inside Slovenia), and the rest forms the border between Croatia and Hungary. The largest city on the river is Graz, Austria. Its drainage basin covers an area of . Tributaries of the Mur include the Mürz, the Sulm, the Ščavnica, the Ledava and the Trnava. The river was attested as Maura in AD 799, Muora in 890, Mura in 1259, Mvr and Mver in 1310, and Muer in 1354. The name is probably of Slavic origin, nominalized from the adjective *murъ 'dark', meaning 'dark water'. The river rises in a remote valley within the Lungau region of Austrian state of Salzburg. The river flows eastwards through Tamsweg before crossing the border into the state of Styria. Between Tamsweg and Unzmarkt-Frauenburg the river flows through a rural mountain valley and is closely paralleled by the long narrow gauge Murtalbahn railway. From Unzmarkt the river continues in an easterly direction through the industrial towns of Leoben and Bruck an der Mur. At Bruck an der Mur the Mürz joins the Mur, which turns sharply south to flow through the city of Graz. The river flows through the centre of Graz, passing underneath the Schloßberg and by the historic Inner City. As a result of being the European Capital of Culture for 2003, an artificial island known as the Murinsel was constructed in the middle of the river. Once heavily polluted by several paper mills on the shore and by the ironworks around Leoben, the water quality has improved since the 1980s and the river is now seen as an asset to the city. From Graz the river continues to flow south, past the town of Leibnitz to its nearby confluence with the Sulm, where it adopts a more easterly course.