Salzburg: A Baroque Stage Set with a Fortress for a Backdrop

A draft from our September notebook — accurate in spirit, still a little raw in the writing.

Salzburg is small enough to walk in a day and dense enough to keep you busy for three. The Old Town sits in a tight bend of the Salzach river, hemmed in by two steep wooded hills, with the Hohensalzburg Fortress sitting up on one of them like something out of a children's book about kingdoms. From the new town on the opposite bank, the view across the river to the Altstadt is one of those compositions that doesn't really need a photographer to do anything clever. The city has already done the work.

We used Salzburg as a base for five nights — two for the city, one for Werfen, one for Hallstatt, and a buffer day that ended up being the best of the lot. If you're planning the same triangle, this is the place to put your suitcase down.

Day 1
The Altstadt and Getreidegasse

Salzburg's Altstadt is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and you understand why within about ten minutes of arriving. The streets are narrow, the buildings tall and pastel, and almost everything pre-dates the nineteenth century. Getreidegasse — the main shopping street — is famous for its wrought-iron guild signs hanging from every shopfront, including, somewhat surreally, over the McDonald's, which is required to comply with the same medieval rules as everyone else.

The Altstadt is also where Mozart was born, in 1756, in a yellow building at Getreidegasse 9 that's now the Mozart Geburtshaus museum. We went; it's small and well-curated and contains his childhood violin, which is the kind of object that does something quiet to you when you stand in front of it. There's a second Mozart house across the river (Mozart-Wohnhaus, where the family lived later) if you want the full set.

Day 2
Hohensalzburg Fortress

The Hohensalzburg Fortress has stood on its hill since 1077, has never been successfully taken by siege, and is one of the largest fully-preserved medieval castles in Europe. You can walk up — it's a steady twenty-minute climb on a switchback path — or take the funicular from the Festungsgasse, which is quicker and frankly more fun. We went up on foot and came down on the funicular, which we recommend.

Inside, the highlights are the Princes' Chambers (extraordinary late-Gothic woodwork), the marionette museum, and the panoramic terrace, which gives you the postcard view back over the Old Town with the spires of the cathedral and the Franciscan church poking up out of the rooftops, and the Alps standing politely in the background as if waiting for their cue.

Day 2
Mirabell Gardens and the Inevitable Sound of Music

Across the river, the Mirabell Gardens are a Baroque set piece of clipped hedges, fountains, and a Pegasus statue around which generations of children have been photographed twirling. If you've seen The Sound of Music, you'll recognise the steps and the gravel paths immediately — the "Do-Re-Mi" sequence was filmed here, and Salzburg has not stopped trading on this for sixty years.

You can either embrace the Sound of Music tour or studiously avoid it; we did neither and just walked the locations we happened across — Mirabell, the Nonnberg Abbey gate, the lake at Leopoldskron — which felt like the right compromise. The film tour buses are unmistakable. They are also very full, which suggests we may be in the minority.

Day 3
Cathedrals, Squares and Coffee

The Salzburg Cathedral (Dom) is enormous, white, and surprisingly austere inside given the Baroque exuberance everywhere else; Mozart was baptised in its font, which is still there. The connected sequence of squares — Domplatz, Residenzplatz, Kapitelplatz with its giant golden orb-and-man sculpture — is the heart of the Old Town and the place where, if you only have an hour, you should spend it.

For coffee, we kept defaulting to Café Tomaselli, which has been a coffeehouse since 1700 and feels like it. Newspapers on wooden sticks, waitresses circulating with trays of cakes you point at rather than order, and the slightly imperious atmosphere of a place that doesn't really need your custom. It's wonderful.

A Base for Werfen and Hallstatt

The practical reason to stay in Salzburg rather than somewhere smaller is that it's an excellent launchpad. Werfen is forty minutes south on the regional train; Hallstatt is two-and-a-bit hours east via Attnang-Puchheim with a single change. Both are doable as day trips, and we did them as such, returning each evening to the same hotel near Mirabellplatz. Storing one suitcase in one place for the whole Austrian leg made everything easier than the alternative — Hallstatt's accommodation is expensive and limited, and we were grateful not to be dragging luggage across a lake ferry.