Three days in Salzburg: an Italian city that ended up in the Alps

Two nights in the old town: the shopping street and Mozart's birthplace, the fortress and the catacombs in the cliff, and coffee and the Mirabell gardens on the way to the train.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Salzburg
Places
6 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Salzburg is what happens when a line of archbishops with their own army, their own currency and a salt monopoly decide their town should look like Italy. From the end of the sixteenth century they knocked down the medieval streets and rebuilt in Italian baroque: wide squares, domed churches, marble, arcades. The result got called the Rome of the North, and it sits in a river valley with wooded cliffs pressing in on both sides and the Alps rising behind, which is a combination you will not find in Italy at all.

Two industries have grown on top of that, and both are inescapable. Mozart was born here in 1756 and the city has been selling him ever since, down to the chocolate balls with his face on. The Sound of Music was filmed here in 1965, and coachloads still arrive to be driven round the locations. Neither is a reason to come and neither ruins the place, but you should know that the centre in July is very full indeed.

The old town is small, closed to cars and walkable end to end in a quarter of an hour, so three days is generous rather than tight. Two nights gets you the fortress, the churches, one long evening in a beer garden run by monks, and enough time left over to climb something.

Highlights

  • A white fortress on a green crag, never taken by an enemy in nine hundred years of trying
  • Catacombs cut into a cliff face above a graveyard of wrought iron crosses
  • The house where Mozart was born, on a street of hanging guild signs
  • Beer poured from a wooden barrel into a stone mug, in a monastery garden under chestnut trees
  • A dwarf garden, a marble staircase, and the steps everyone photographs without knowing why

Where to stay

Salzburg, two nights

The layout takes about a minute to learn. The Salzach river runs through the middle. On the south bank, the old town, jammed between the water and the Mönchsberg cliff, with the fortress on the ridge above it. On the north bank, the newer town, the Mirabell gardens and the station. Four bridges connect them and the whole of it fits inside a half hour walk.

Stay on the old town side for atmosphere and pay for it, or on the north bank near Mirabell for space, quiet and a shorter walk to the train. Anywhere within the ring of hills is close enough to everything.

The old town has been on the UNESCO list since 1997, and it is one of the best preserved centres in the German-speaking world largely because nothing much happened here after the archbishops ran out of money.

Day by day

Day 1 in Salzburg

Getreidegasse, Mozart's birthplace and the monastery beer garden

Start on Getreidegasse, the narrow shopping lane running parallel to the river, and look up. Every shop hangs a wrought iron sign out over the street showing what it sells, a rule from the days when much of the population could not read, and the chains and the golden arches have had to make their own in the same style. It is the most photographed street in the city and it takes ten minutes to walk.

At number nine, a tall yellow house. The Mozart family rented rooms on the third floor from 1747, Wolfgang was born there on 27 January 1756, and they stayed until he was seventeen. The museum inside is better than its souvenir shop suggests: his childhood violin, the clavichord, portraits and a great many letters from a family that wrote to each other constantly and at length.

In the evening, cross the river end of the old town and climb the hill to the Augustiner. Monks have brewed here since 1621. You collect a stone mug, rinse it at a stone trough, hand it over to be filled from a wooden barrel, and carry it out to a chestnut garden with a view over the roofs. Food comes from a row of market stalls inside, or you bring your own, which people genuinely do.

  1. 15:00

    Getreidegasse

    Landmark

    The old town's main lane, hung end to end with painted iron guild signs. Busy from mid morning, quiet before nine, and the fastest way to get your bearings in the centre.

  2. 16:00

    Mozarts Geburtshaus

    Culture

    The house Mozart was born in, on the third floor at Getreidegasse 9, kept as a museum of instruments, portraits and family letters. Small rooms and steep stairs; go late in the day when the coach groups have gone.

  3. 18:30

    Augustiner Bräustübl

    Eat

    A monastery brewery pouring Märzen from wooden barrels into stone mugs since 1621, with a chestnut garden outside and vast halls for when it rains. Buy food from the stalls in the corridor, or bring your own.

With more time: If the light is still good before dinner, the Kapuzinerberg on the far bank is fifteen minutes of steps up through forest from Linzergasse and gives the best free view of the fortress and the old town together.

Day 2 in Salzburg

The fortress, St Peter's catacombs and the cathedral

Go up early. The Hohensalzburg has sat on its ridge since 1077, was extended by archbishop after archbishop, and was never taken by a besieging army, which in this part of Europe is close to a record. The funicular from the old town is the oldest in Austria and saves a steep twenty minutes; the walk up is not hard if you would rather earn it. Inside are the state rooms, a museum of armour and instruments of a less pleasant kind, and a marionette exhibition. What you actually come for is the wall: the Alps on one side, the whole town laid out flat on the other, and a field below with a single isolated house on it, which was the executioner's, because nobody would live near him.

Come down the far side into the courtyards of St Peter's. The abbey graveyard is a small dense garden of wrought iron crosses under the cliff, still in use, and set into the rock face above it are the catacombs: rough chapels cut into the stone, reached by steps, costing a couple of euros and taking twenty minutes. The view back down over the graves is the picture everybody takes.

Finish across the square at the cathedral, which is where the Italy comparison stops being a figure of speech. It was consecrated in 1628 to a design by a Lombard architect, white and enormous, with three bronze doors and a dome that pulls the whole square upwards. Mozart was baptised at the font by the entrance and later worked here as court organist. Downstairs the excavation museum shows Roman floors and the footings of the Romanesque church that stood here first.

  1. 09:00

    Hohensalzburg Fortress

    Historic

    The white fortress on the ridge, begun in 1077 and never taken. State rooms, an armoury and a marionette museum inside; the rampart view over the town and the Alps is the reason to come. The funicular runs from Festungsgasse.

  2. 12:15

    Lunch at a sausage stand

    Eat

    The stands on Alter Markt and behind the cathedral do a Bosna or a Käsekrainer with mustard and a bread roll for a few euros, standing up, in about four minutes. It is what everyone working in the old town eats.

  3. 13:30

    St Peter's Church, Cemetery, and Catacombs

    Historic

    An abbey church, a walled graveyard packed with wrought iron grave markers, and rough chapels hollowed out of the cliff behind it. Reckon on a couple of euros, twenty minutes and a head for steps.

  4. 15:15

    Salzburg Cathedral

    Religious

    The great white baroque church at the centre of the old town, with Mozart's baptismal font inside the door. Free to enter the nave; the excavation museum underneath shows the Roman and Romanesque layers below the floor.

With more time: Nonnberg Abbey is five minutes along the ridge from the fortress path: a working convent founded around 712, said to be the oldest continuously running one in the world, and the church where the real Maria von Trapp was a novice and was married. The nuns sing at dawn and the church is otherwise quiet all day.

Day 3 in Salzburg

Coffee at Tomaselli and the Mirabell gardens

Give the last morning to the two things on the way to the station. First, coffee on Alter Markt at the oldest coffee house in the city, where the cakes come round on a tray carried at shoulder height and you point at what you want. Order an Einspänner, which is a strong black coffee under a lid of whipped cream, served in a glass so the layers show.

Then over the river to Mirabell. An archbishop built the palace in 1606 for the woman he lived with and their children, which was a scandal that eventually cost him his job, and the gardens are the finest formal ones in the city: hedged parterres lined up so that the fortress sits exactly in the gap at the far end. The Dwarf Garden along the wall holds a row of marble grotesques carved four hundred years ago. The staircase up from the terrace is where the children in The Sound of Music finish Do-Re-Mi, which explains the queue on it.

The Marble Hall inside is free when nothing is booked in it, gilded and white and still used for weddings and concerts most days of the year. The station is ten minutes' walk north from the garden gate.

  1. 09:00

    Tomaselli

    Other

    The oldest coffee house in Salzburg, on Alter Markt, with newspapers on sticks and a cake tray carried between the tables. Einspänner and a slice, and take the first floor if the ground floor is full.

  2. 10:30

    Schloss Mirabell

    Other

    A 1606 palace whose formal gardens are laid out to frame the fortress. Find the marble grotesques along the west wall and the gilded hall upstairs; both the gardens and the hall are free.

  3. 12:30

    Train from Salzburg Hauptbahnhof

    Travel

    Ten minutes on foot north from the Mirabell gardens, with lockers on the concourse if you want the morning without a bag. Vienna, Munich and Innsbruck all leave from here at least hourly.

With more time: With a later train, Schloss Hellbrunn is twenty minutes out on bus 25: a summer palace whose archbishop had trick fountains built into the garden furniture to soak his dinner guests, and they still work, and the guide will still get you. Take a coat you do not mind wetting.

Before you go

Getting in

Trains from Munich take about an hour and a half and run all day, which makes Munich airport a better arrival point than Salzburg's own for most long-haul routes. Vienna is under three hours on the railjet, Innsbruck about two. The Hauptbahnhof is on the north side of the river, fifteen minutes' walk from the old town or two stops on the trolleybus.

Salzburg airport is close enough to town that a trolleybus does the job in about twenty minutes. It has a decent spread of European routes and very little else.

Getting around

Walk. The old town is a pedestrian zone and everything in it is within ten minutes of everything else; the only serious climbs are the ones you would want to make anyway, and there is a funicular for the biggest of them.

For anything further out there are trolleybuses and buses, with a single fare of around three euros from the driver and a 24 hour ticket for not much more. Overnight guests now pay a small nightly mobility contribution through their accommodation and travel free on public transport across the whole state in return, which is worth knowing before you buy anything.

Buses stop early. The last ones run out of the centre and can leave you several kilometres from your bed, so after about ten in the evening plan on walking or a taxi.

Mozart, and how much of it to do

There are two Mozart houses, five minutes apart. The birthplace on Getreidegasse is the one to do: he was born in it, lived in it until he was seventeen, and it holds instruments and family letters. The residence across the river is a reconstruction, opened in 1996 after the original was destroyed in the war, and it is for people who have already done the first one.

Concerts are constant and range from serious to pantomime. The fortress and the palaces run evening chamber programmes in rooms worth sitting in whatever is played. In summer the Salzburg Festival takes over the entire city for five weeks, which is glorious if you have tickets and expensive if you do not, because every bed in the valley is spoken for.

Eating and drinking

Salzburg eats Bavarian more than Viennese: pork, dumplings, brown bread, and beer rather than wine. The sausage stands on the old squares are cheap, fast and good, and locals use them at lunchtime rather than the terraces.

The city's own dessert is Salzburger Nockerl, three sweet soufflé peaks meant to represent the hills around the town, ordered for two people and taking half an hour to appear. The chocolate Mozartkugel was invented here in 1884 by a confectioner whose shop still sells the original, hand-made and wrapped in silver and blue; everything in a red wrapper is somebody else's factory version.

When to go

May, June and September are best: long light, open mountains, and the old town still passable at midday. July and August bring the festival and the peak of the coach traffic together, and late December brings one of the prettier Christmas markets in the country.

It rains here. Salzburg sits where the Alpine foothills catch weather coming off the plain, and it is measurably wetter than Vienna. Bring a coat in any month and do not build a whole day around a view.

Salzburg is a small city that was rich for a long time and has spent four hundred years being looked at. That can make the middle of it feel like a stage set in high season, and the cure is simple: get above it. From the fortress wall, or the forest path on the far bank, the town stops being a shopping street with a Mozart problem and becomes what it actually is, a baroque city wedged into a gap in the Alps.

Go up early, eat standing at a sausage stand, and spend the evening in the beer garden with the monks.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three days enough for Salzburg?
For the city itself, yes, with room to spare. Two full days cover the old town, the fortress and the gardens comfortably. A fourth day is worth having if you want the lakes and mountains east of town, or the salt mine at Hallein, which are the reasons to stay longer.
Should I do a Sound of Music tour?
Only if you love the film. The bus tours are cheerful, four hours long and take in the lake district as well as the city locations, which is decent value for the scenery alone. If you are lukewarm on the film, you will see the main Salzburg locations anyway just by walking around.
Is the Salzburg Card worth it?
Often, yes, unlike its equivalents elsewhere. It covers the fortress funicular, the museums, the palaces, the trick fountains and all public transport, and the fortress alone is a large part of the price. Buy the 24 hour version for the day you plan to do the fortress and the churches.
Can I do Hallstatt as a day trip?
Yes, and thousands do: about two and a half hours each way by train and boat, or an hour and a half by car or tour bus. It is a beautiful village and an extremely crowded one, and a day of it eats most of a three night stay. Better on a longer trip, or as a stop on the way somewhere else.
How do I use this itinerary?
Copy it into a trip of your own and shift the pieces around your train times: the days above are built to be walked in the order given, but the fortress is worth moving to whichever morning has the clearest sky.