Salzburg Excursions

Salzburg! The city where Mozart was born, but the one place he couldn’t stand. In his time it was not much more than a salt mining town, but today it has become a place of culture, history, music and religion (not to mention tourism). On our tour with Gabrielle on January 25th, we were able to learn about the history of the city's prized Salzburger Dom (Cathedral). In December 1598, a mysterious fire burned down half of the original church that had stood in the same location since 774. This event allowed the Archbishop Wolf Dietrich of Salzburg to tear down the structure and have the Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi draw up plans for a new church in the Baroque style. The building itself, however, was not built according to his plans, for he desired it to be large enough to fit 16,000 people. In 1612 the conflict with Bavaria caused Wolf Dietrich to be arrested and imprisoned, halting all progress of construction. Two years later, Archbishop Markus Sittikus took over the project and hired Santino Solari to complete it. Solari designed today’s cathedral by dramatically altering the Scamozzi plan. It stands today, half the size of the original plan, which, granted, is still very huge. It was an amazing experience to walk inside this Cathedral and look up at all of the beautiful decorations, paintings, and stain-glass windows. What I found interesting was that in the front of the church there were four organs surrounding the main area, allowing four organists to play at the same time, and in the back of the church there is an even larger and quite magnificent organ. Outside of the church we were able to see the fountain that was used in the “Sound of Music.” Unfortunately it was covered, so we could only see its top. This is because during the winter months water gets inside the crevices of the fountain and then expands as it freezes, causing cracks to form in-between the layers of ‘marble’.

Another fun place we explored was the Festung Hohensalzburg (Salzburg Castle). On the day we decided to visit, we had wanted to take the funicular railway to the top, but when we got there it was under construction so we had to hike up 1660 ft.  When we reached the top we were pretty winded, but it was definitely worth the climb because the view was spectacular! Here we were able to walk on the palace grounds, admire the buildings, go inside the chapel, and visit some of the exhibits, including a ‘torture chamber,’ marionette puppet museum, and some of the actual rooms of the palace! These rooms had dinnerware sets, interesting musical  instruments, artwork, and armory. Altogether it was a beautiful excursion and a great experience!