Austria: Salzburg

We awoke the next morning, refreshed and well-rested, and started our three-hour drive to Salzburg.  With a delicious breakfast stop at a bakery in Atlenbach, we also enjoyed the town's festivities as they were celebrating Midsummer, or the summer solstice.  Everyone was clothed in their traditional Austrian costume and we were driving along the road next to the city hall right as a town meeting/ceremony was adjourned.  We were watching the parade of men, women, children, and flags walk by when all of the sudden we heard and felt the kaboom! of cannons.  They went off several times and we became a part of the parade as we followed the crowd down the street in our big blue van.  Finally we came to a road where we could detour from the parade and were on our way.

I loved taking pictures of the landscape while we were driving but the pictures didn't turn out very well.

Salzburg is the fourth-largest city in Austria and the capital.  Salzburg's "Old Town" (Altstadt) has internationally renowned baroque architecture and one of the best-preserved city centers north of the Alps.

Salzburg was the birthplace of 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and in the mid-20th century, the city was the setting for parts of the American musical and film The Sound of Music, which features famous landmarks in Austria.

When we arrived, our first stop was the Nonnberg Abbey.  We parked the car in an underground lot and climbed the stairs up to the Abbey. 

Overlooking the plaza below from the top of the stairs

This is a view of the Abbey from Kapuziner Hill that I took from Wikipedia

Nonnberg Gate (picture taken from a Google search)

 

Nonnberg Abbey is a Benedictine monastery and was founded ca. 714 by Saint Rupert of Salzburg and is the oldest women's religious house in the German-speaking world.  Its first abbess was Saint Erentrudis of Salzburg, who was either a niece or a sister of Saint Rupert.

The abbey was independent of the founding house from 987 and was re-built in about 1000. This building was largely destroyed in a fire of 1423.  Reconstruction took place between 1464 and 1509.  In 1624 the church was enlarged by the addition of three side chapels.  A refurbishment in the Baroque style took place in the 1880s.

The abbey has acquired international fame through Maria Augusta Kutschera, later Maria Augusta von Trapp.  She was a postulant in the abbey after World War I and whose life was the basis for the film The Sound of Music.

 

 

  

  

After visiting the Abbey, we went to the Festung Hohensalzburg (High Salzburg Fortress) atop the Festungsberg mountain.  Erected at the request of the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, it is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe today.

Construction of the fortress began in 1077 under Archbishop Gebhard von Helfenstein.  This original design was just a basic bailey with a wooden wall.  In the Holy Roman Empire, the Salzburg Archbishops already were powerful political figures, and they expanded the castle to protect their interests.

The only time that the fortress actually came under siege was during the Peasants' War in 1525, when a group of miners, farmers and townspeople tried to oust Prince-Archbishop Matthäus Lang, but failed to take the castle.  In 1612 the deposed Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau died here in prison. During the Thirty Years' War, Archbishop Count Paris of Lodron strengthened the town's defenses, including Hohensalzburg.  He added various parts to the fortress, such as the gunpowder stores and additional gatehouses.  The fort was surrendered without a fight to French troops under General Jean Victor Marie Moreau during the Napoleonic War of the Second Coalition in 1800 and the last Prince-Archbishop Count Hieronymus von Colloredo fled to Vienna.  In the 19th century, it was used as barracks, storage depot and dungeon before being abandoned as a military outpost in 1861.

Hohensalzburg was refurbished from the late 19th century onwards and became a major tourist attraction, with the Festungsbahn cable car, opened in 1892, leading up from the town to the Hasengrabenbastei.  During the early 20th century it was used as a prison, holding Italian prisoners of war during World War I and Nazi activists in the 1930s.  It stands today as one of the best preserved castles in Europe.

A picture of the "loo" (toilet) is on the left and Amber is in the torture room on the right.

 The following pictures are views of Salzburg from the top of the tower of the castle:

A view of Salzburg Residenz, the city palace of the Archbishops in the Old Town.  

The building hidden in the trees in the middle of the fields is the "Cabbage Patch House" where the gardener lived that took care of the cabbage patch and vegetable garden.

  

Amber is in the Golden Chamber of the castle

When we finished touring the Salzburg Fortress, it started pouring rain as we rode the funicular back down to Mozart Square.  The following picture was also googled because I didn't want my camera to get wet.

Sam and Marquessa had finished early and were huddled under this gold globe in the center of the plaza with the rain dripping all around them.  Everyone cleared the square immediately when the rain started and we ran to join them under the globe.  Joe saw a pretzel stand nearby and darted back for a snack in the pouring rain.  We ate our cheesy pretzel under the globe while our feet and legs were getting soaked.   Then Joe had the idea to run across the plaza towards the cathedral to get out of the rain.  We raced after him hoping that it was open.  Luckily it was so we darted inside. 

The Salzburg Cathedral is a 17th century baroque cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Salzburg, dedicated to Saint Rupert of Salzburg.  It is the site of Mozart's baptism.

The first cathedral was built under Saint Vergilius of Salzburg, who might have used foundations by St. Rupert.  The first Dom was recorded in 774 and was 66 meters long and 33 meters wide.  Archbishop Arno (785 – 821) was the first to arrange renovations of the Dom, which was in place for less than 70 years.  In 842, the building burned down after being struck by lightning.  Three years later, the re-erection of the building started.  A choir with a crypt was built between 1000 and 1020 and the West-towers were built from 1106 to 1147.

This original church thus experienced at least three extensive building and rebuilding campaigns during the early Middle Ages.  In 1598, the basilica was severely damaged, and after several failed attempts at restoration and reconstruction, the building was finally ordered to be demolished by Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich.

Wolf Dietrich hired the Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi to prepare a plan for a comprehensive new Baroque building but construction did not begin however until 1614 when the cornerstone of the new cathedral was laid. The present cathedral, designed by Santino Solari, who fundamentally changed the original Scamozzi plan was completed remarkably in less than 15 years, being finished by 1628.  At its consecration on September 24, 1628, 12 choirs positioned in the marble galleries of the cathedral sang. The present Salzburg Cathedral is built partially upon the foundations of the old basilica.  One other surviving relic that predates the baroque edifice is the 14th Century Gothic baptismal font.  The relics of Saint Rupert were transferred here when the cathedral was completed.

The Salzburg Cathedral was partially damaged during World War II when a single bomb crashed through the central dome over the crossing.  Repairs were somewhat slow to take place, but restoration was complete by 1959.

Because we were completely soaked from our knees down to our toes, we decided to check into our hotel and get cleaned up before grabbing some dinner and finishing up our tour of the city in the car.  We checked into the Villa Trapp Hotel.

This was the original home of the Von Trapp family that is featured in The Sound of Music.   Details of the history of the von Trapp family were altered for the musical.  Georg Ludwig von Trapp lived with his family in a villa in the rich district of Aigen, a suburb of Salzburg.   The real Maria von Trapp was sent to be a tutor to one of the children, not a governess to all of them.  The Captain's oldest child was a boy, not a girl, and the names of the children were changed.  The von Trapps spent some years in Austria after Maria and the Captain married.  They did not flee there during the war but merely boarded the train to Italy, not Switzerland.  They then made their way to America and settled in Pennsylvania.

The front of Villa Von Trapp

Maria is said to have been unhappy with the movie's portrayal of her future husband as having been cold and stern prior to her arrival, which she and their children strongly dispute.  However, the scene in which he summons the children with a boatswain's whistle to introduce them to her is taken from her 1949 book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, and that book has a chapter entitled "The Baron Doesn't Want It", describing the activities in which the children could not engage for fear of offending their father.   In 1972, however, Maria wrote another book, Maria, in which she states that he was not home when she first met the children.

They ended up having three more children together and the actual Trapp villa was confiscated by the Nazis after the family had emigrated to the US in 1938.  The head of the SS Heinrich Himmler used the building for his personal needs, transformed the villa'′s chapel into a bar and party room and had swastikas carved into the furniture.  As a luxury building, the villa was used for receptions and accommodating Nazi celebrities and even the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini stayed in the Trapp Villa once.

In 1953, after the villa had been returned to the Trapp family, they sold the building to a monastic order called "Kongregation der Missionare vom Kostbaren Blut".  In 2008, the missionaries announced that they were going to rent the Trapp villa to two hotel managers who in turn would make the building a luxury restaurant but as of July 2008, visitors can rent 14 rooms with a total of 26 beds. 

Our room was Martina's room and we were excited to check in.  The house held so much history and we enjoyed looking at the pictures of the Von Trapp family and reading the scrapbooks and newspaper clippings of their journey to America. 

These are pictures of the lobby and entrance.  The black benches on the right and below are original pieces of furniture left in the house. 

The original seven Von Trapp children

The main parlor or sitting room off the lobby

The chapel inside Villa Trapp may be used as a venue for weddings and receptions today.

 Sitting rooms were available on each of the three levels.

 

We all sat together at the dining room table for breakfast.

After we had settled in and got cleaned up, we headed out for some dinner.  We ate at Steinleckenbach and I had the best schnitzel and spaetzle of the whole trip.  It was amazing.  Actually most of the food we ate was amazing but I never took pictures of it because we snarfed it up so quickly.

Then we took a driving tour of the rest of the city.  We visited the Mirabelle Palace and toured the grounds because the building was closed.  It was built in the Baroque style, with Italian and French models, by Archbishop Wolf Dietrich Raitenau in 1606.  In its geometrically-arranged gardens are mythology-themed statues dating from 1730 and four groups of sculpture (Eneas, Hercules, Paris and Pluton) by the Italian sculptor Ottavio Mosto, from 1690.  It is noted for its boxwood layouts.

Does this look familiar?

Then we drove to Schloss Leopoldskron, a rococo palace and national historic monument.  It is located on the lake Leopoldskroner Weiher.  The palace was never used as the back of the Von Trapp villa, although even some tours of Salzburg claim that it is.  Scenes were filmed on the adjacent property including the family drinking pink lemonade ("not too sweet, not too sour, just too... pink!") on the terrace, Maria and the Captain arguing on the terrace, and the children falling off the boat in the lake.  Only shots showing the lake, were filmed there, using a replica of Leopoldskron's terrace, and horse-gates, leading to the lake.

You can see Festung Hohensalzburg in the distance to the right. 

Any movie shots showing the von Trapp's home itself, were filmed at Schloss Frohnburg.  We didn't actually get to see this building so I googled this picture just for history's sake.

The ballroom for the interior shootings, which were done in a movie studio, is a copy of the Venetian room from Leopoldskron.   The palace has been home to the Salzburg Global Seminar since 1947 and is closed to the public.   We took pictures of the rear view and then drove around to the front of the building.  It was getting dark and the gates were locked so Amber and I tried to climb the fence to get a better picture.  This was the best view we could get between the trees and fenceline.

It was getting dark and rainy so we headed back to the Villa Trapp Hotel to turn in for the night.  Salzburg was another one of our favorite cities and it was beautiful, despite the rain.