It lies on the eastern side of lake Wolfgangsee in the Salzkammergut resort region, close to Sankt Gilgen and the Upper Austrian municipalities of St. Wolfgang and Bad Ischl.

Also in Strobl, the University of Vienna operates the Bundesinstitut für Erwachsenenbildung, an adult-education institution, and a frequent location for academic conferences or for the Summer School for International and European Studies.

The famous town of St. Wolfgang is within hiking distance, and common excursions from Strobl include the Postalm plateau and the Schafberg (1783m), which can be ascended via a cog railway, the Schafbergbahn, as well as Bad Ischl, where Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria often spent his summers.

The name Strobl originally meant "scrubby" or "unkempt"; the town's name goes back to the 14th century, when the Wolfgangsee was known as the Abersee, and one Friedrich Stroblo appears as the owner of a Seege—a fishpond or weir.

Princess Marie Vassiltchikov, in her memoir Berlin Diaries, mentions stopping in Strobl during her flight after the 20 July Plot against Adolf Hitler.

In the last days of World War II, King Leopold III of Belgium and Princess Lilian were interned at Strobl, closely guarded by a Waffen-SS contingent.

[dubious – discuss] [citation needed] The town was in the US zone of Allied-occupied Austria after the war, where the villa of the Viennese banking family Deutsch (expropriated by the Nazis in 1938) served as an officers' club.

In 1758 the archbishop Sigismund III (Christoph von Schrattenbach) commissioned Kassian Singer, master builder from Kitzbühel, to build a church in the village.