The term "Central Alps" is very common in the Geography of Austria as one of the seven major landscape regions of the country.

The term "Central Eastern Alps" may also be used more broadly to refer to a larger area of the Eastern Alps, mainly located in Austria, extending from the foot of the Bergamasque Alps at Lake Como and the Bernina Range in the Graubünden canton of eastern Switzerland along the Liechtenstein shore of the Rhine in the west as far as to the lower promontories east of the river Mur including the Hochwechsel in Austrian Styria.

On the perimeter, however, there are also less high, often less rugged mountain chains, like the Gurktal Alps and the eastern foothills.

The Central Alps consist mainly of the gneiss and slate rocks of the various Austroalpine nappes (Lower and Upper Austroalpine), with the exception of the Hohe Tauern and Engadine windows, where they are composed mostly of Jurassic rock and limestones and, locally, (Bergell and Rieserferner) also of granite.

The Austroalpine submerges itself at the eastern edge of the Alps under the Tertiary sediments of the Alpine Foreland in the east and the Pannonian Basin.

[3] Also in terms of rock, the Ortler main crest is part of the Southern Limestone Alps.