Salzburg

Salzburg Travel Guide

"All Salzburg is a stage," Count Ferdinand Czernin once wrote. "Its beauty, its tradition, its history enshrined in the grey stone of which its buildings are made, its round of music, its crowd of fancy-dressed people, all combine to lift you out of everyday life, to make you forget that somewhere far off, life hides another, drearier, harder, and more unpleasant reality." Shortly after the count's book, This Salzburg, was published in 1937, the unpleasant reality arrived; but having survived the Nazis, Salzburg once again became one of Austria's top drawing cards.

Art lovers call it the Golden City of High Baroque; historians refer to it as the Florence of the North or the German Rome; and, of course, music lovers know it as the birthplace of one of the world's most beloved composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91). If the young Mozart was the boy wonder of 18th-century Europe and Salzburg did him no particular honor in his lifetime, it is making up for it now. Since 1920 the world-famous Salzburger Festspiele (Salzburg Festival), the third-oldest on the continent, have honored "Wolferl" with performances of his works by the world's greatest musicians.

To see and hear them, celeb-heavy crowds pack the city from the last week in July until the end of August. Whether performed in the festival halls -- the Grosses Festspielhaus, the "House for Mozart," and the Felsenreitschule, to name the big three -- or outdoors with opulent Baroque volutes and pilasters of Salzburg's architecture as background, Mozart's music serves as the heartbeat of the city.

Ironically, many who come to this golden city of High Baroque may first hear the instantly recognizable strains of music from the film that made Salzburg a household name: from the Mönchsberg to Nonnberg Convent, it's hard to go exploring without hearing someone humming "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" A popular tourist exercise is to make the town's acquaintance by visiting all the sights featured in that beloved Hollywood extravaganza The Sound of Music, filmed here in 1964.

Julie Andrews may wish it wasn't so, but one can hardly imagine taking in the Mirabell Gardens, the Pferdeschwemme fountain, Nonnberg Convent, the Residenzplatz, and all the other filmed locations without imagining Maria and the von Trapp children trilling their hearts out. Oddly enough, just like Mozart, the Trapp family -- who escaped the Third Reich by fleeing their beloved country -- were little appreciated at home; Austria was the only place on the planet where the film failed, closing after a single week's showing in Vienna and Salzburg.

It is said that the Austrian populace at large didn't cotton to a prominent family up and running in the face of the Nazis, and even now, locals are amazed by The Sound of Music's popularity around the world. Austrians are slowly warming up to the film; in 2005 Vienna's Volksoper premiered the first Austrian stage production of the Broadway musical. It may just be a matter of time before the Panorama and Salzburg Sightseeing bus tours of Salzburg's SoM sites are crammed with as many Austrians as Americans.

But whether it is the arias of Mozart or the ditties of Rodgers and Hammerstein, no one can deny music is the element that shapes the life of the city. It is heard everywhere: in churches, castles, palaces, town house courtyards, and, of course, concert halls. During the five weeks of the Salzburger Festspiele there are as many as 10 concerts a day (most sold out months in advance). If the Salzburger Festspiele remain one of the world's most stirring musical events, this is also due to their perfect setting.

Salzburg lies on both banks of the Salzach River, at the point where it is pinched between two mountains, the Kapuzinerberg on one side, the Mönchsberg on the other. In broader view are many beautiful Alpine peaks. Added to these many gifts of Mother Nature, man's contribution is a trove of buildings worthy of such surroundings. Salzburg's rulers pursued construction on a grand scale ever since Wolf-Dietrich von Raitenau -- the "Medici prince-archbishop who preached in stone" -- began his regime in the latter part of the 16th century.

At the age of only 28, Wolf-Dietrich envisioned "his" Salzburg to be the Rome of the Alps, with a town cathedral grander than St. Peter's, a Residenz as splendid as a Roman palace, and his private Mirabell Gardens flaunting the most fashionable styles of Italianate horticulture. He employed only Italian architects to realize his dreams. After he was deposed by the rulers of Bavaria -- he was imprisoned (very elegantly, thank you) in the Hohensalzburg fortress -- other cultured prince-archbishops took over. Johann Ernst von Thun and Franz Anton von Harrach dismissed the Italian artists and commanded the masters of Viennese Baroque, Fischer von Erlach and Lukas von Hildebrandt, to complete Wolf-Dietrich's vision. The result is that Salzburg's many fine buildings blend into a harmonious whole. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is there so cohesive a flowering of Baroque architecture.

But times change and the Salzburgians with them. Museums of contemporary art are springing up as fast as edelweiss across Austria, so it is not surprising to learn that Salzburg is now home to one of the most striking: the Museum der Moderne. The avant-garde showcase stands on the very spot where Julie Andrews "do-re-mi"-d with the von Trapp brood; where once the fusty Café Winkler stood atop the Mönchsberg mount, a modern, cubical museum of cutting-edge art now commands one of the grandest views of the city.