Heading back to Stuttgart after a girls’ weekend in Vienna, we decided to break up the 600km journey with an afternoon stop-off in Salzburg. Famous as the birthplace of Mozart and the home of the film The Sound of Music, Salzburg also has a beautiful historic old town, an 11th century fortress and an enviable location as a gateway town to the Austrian alps. It’s safe to say that there’s plenty to do here, and having visited again since, I actually consider Salzburg to be one of my favourite cities in Europe!
As always, we began our exploration with a good wander round. We had parked in the east side of town and then walked towards the river, with the intention of crossing into the old town in the west. On the way we passed by the Mirabell palace, which gave me the chance to take this iconic Salzburg photo looking towards the fortress:
There are several bridges over the river into the old town. Perhaps the most interesting is the Marko-Feingold-Steg, a pedestrian footbridge adorned with hundreds of lovelocks which are really a feature in their own right. It also offers a wonderful view of the old town, with its pastel coloured buildings, green church domes and imposing Hohensalzburg fortress beyond.
Aside from the Sound of Music bus tours, most tourists in Salzburg are here because of one very famous man – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was born in the old town here and also spent a few years living in a slightly newer part of the city later in life. Both of these buildings have now become museums and – particularly his birthplace – are extremely busy! I didn’t go inside either of them due to lack of money, time and energy to deal with the crowds, but I have no doubt they would be interesting.
Salzburg old town is full of classically beautiful baroque architecture, much of which is original, having escaped destruction during Allied bombings in WWII. One of the highlights is the Residenzplatz square with its impressive 17th century fountain, considered to be the largest Baroque fountain in central Europe.
After spending some time wandering through the old town, we made our way up towards the fortress. There is a short funicular here which is ideal if you are less mobile or struggle with hills, but it’s expensive for what it is (€3,60 one way or €5,70 return for an adult ticket) and we opted to go on foot instead. It’s a short and steep walk up, but the views back towards Salzburg on a good day are spectacular, with the white buildings and turquoise domes of the city giving way to the tree-covered hills beyond.
We had originally planned to go into the fortress as well, but didn’t think it would be worth paying the entry fee (€11,20 for the basic adult ticket) so just admired the view from the highest point we could get to. I did return to Salzburg on a later trip and on that occasion I did buy tickets to enter the fortress. I actually really enjoyed it, it was bigger and better than I had anticipated and I would definitely say that it is worth paying to go and see!
For this girls’ trip though we decided to simply take a walk along to the Richterhöhe viewpoint, which offers views towards the Alps. Despite the haze, we were rewarded with some beautiful scenery and really got lucky with the weather considering it was October.
We continued our walk a little further before looping back round and heading down into the Altstadt again. This time we nipped into the cathedral, a prominent building with distinctly catholic architecture inside. This was actually my first time in a catholic cathedral of this style, and with its contrasting black-and-white colour scheme, it was very different from other churches I had been to.
I also treated myself to some pricey – but amazing – frozen yoghurt from a little place called Fabi’s in Universitätsplatz. You choose the size container you want (small was plenty for me) and then add toppings. I went with strawberries, blueberries, chocolate sauce and crunchy sprinkles which turned out to be an incredible combination. Such good frozen yoghurt naturally attracts a crowd so it can get busy here but it’s definitely worth queueing for!
Soon it was time to head back to the car and continue our journey west back to Stuttgart. Retracing our steps back across the river to Schloss Mirabell, we happened to come across the house in which Mozart lived as an adult. It’s in a rather busy location nowadays and definitely the less visited of the two but – like most old buildings in Salzburg – it is very pretty:
And so concludes a wonderful afternoon in Salzburg. As I said, I liked the city so much that I returned later on in my year abroad to explore further – and I would definitely go back again given the opportunity!
