Corrales Chronicles: My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary

View of Salzburg from the Hohensalzburg Fortress (see also photo below)

Our next (and last) stop in Austria was Salzburg, most notable as the city where Mozart was born in 1756.

Salzburg was founded in 696 CE. Situated on the Salzach River, the town's main sources of revenue in medieval times were salt extraction, gold mining, and tolls on commerce along the river. Like Innsbruck and most of Austria, over the centuries into the 20th century Salzburg was a geo-political and religious "football."

The most prominent landmark is the Hohensalzburg fortress, a medieval fort that was begun in 1077 and expanded and reinforced many times during the next 800 years. It towers 269 feet above the city. It was retired as a military outpost in 1861 and was refurbished to become a major tourist attraction in the late 1800s. The fortress is the building on the mountain over my left shoulder in the photo below.

The city has a long, rich cultural, religious, musical, and architectural history, and the Old Town became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996. Notwithstanding those cultural riches, however, my interest was driven (as it was in Innsbruck) by a more contemporary phenomenon: the 1965 movie The Sound of Music, much of which was filmed in Salzburg.

Today there are many tour companies offering Sound of Music location tours in and around Salzburg.

But in 1966, I had to roll my own . . . from memory. Here are a couple of the locations in the movie and my photos of them.

The Horse Fountain

Salzburg's most famous horse fountain is the Pferdeschwemme (Horse Pond) on Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz (which wasn't that name when we were there), a historic 17th-century Baroque pool where the prince-archbishops' parade horses were washed.

Scene from the movie
(Julie Andrews and children walking R to L in front of the horse statue)

St. Peter's Cemetery

At the foot of the mountain on which the Hohensalzburg fortress is situated is St. Peter's Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Salzburg, dating from the 700s. The oldest grave marker is dated 1288. Among other city notables, Mozart's older sister, Maria Anna, is buried in the cemetery (1829).

In the movie, the von Trapp family hides in the cemetery as they make their escape from Austria.

Scene from the movie

Ironically, 20th Century Fox could not get permission to film in the cemetery, so they built an exact replica in a Hollywood soundstage where they shot the scene shown above.

The Do-Re-Mi Steps (Mirabell Gardens at the Mirabell Palace)

The Mirabell Palace was built in 1606-07 (when the British were settling Jamestown in North America), and the gardens were laid out 80 years later. The Palace's current neoclassical appearance dates from around 1818, when the Palace was restored after a fire.

Interesting fact: three days before D-Day (June 6, 1944) Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Martin Borman attended the wedding of Eva Braun's sister to Himmler's liaison officer on Hitler's staff at the Mirabell Palace.