Up until 1816,
SALZBURG led a
separate life to the rest of
Austria, existing as an independent
city-state ruled by a sequence of
powerful
prince-archbishops .
An ambitious and cultured bunch,
they turned the city into the most
Italianate city north of the Alps.
Spread out below the brooding
presence of the Hohensalzburg
fortress, the churches, squares and
alleyways of the compact Altstadt
today recollect a long-disappeared
Europe. For many, Salzburg is the
quintessential Austria, offering the
best of the country's Baroque
architecture, subalpine scenery and
a musical heritage largely provided
by the city's most famous son,
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart , whose
bright-eyed visage peers from every
box of the ubiquitous chocolate
delicacy, the
Mozartkügel .
Salzburg's captivation with Mozart
is perhaps best reflected in the
world-famous
Salzburg Festival
, a five-week celebration of opera,
orchestral music and theatre that
begins in late July, although
there's a wide range of (not always
Mozart-related) musical events on
offer throughout the year. Souvenirs
recalling the Salzburg-based musical
The Sound of Music dangle
round the city's neck like some
bad-taste medallion, with coach
tours and shows on the same theme
providing an entertainingly lowbrow
alternative to the more highbrow
events.
Standing at the centre of a
prosperous, economically booming
region, Salzburg also represents
Austria at its most conservative
. Writer Thomas Bernhard, an acerbic
critic of the postwar state who
spent his formative years in
Salzburg, called his home town
"a fatal illness", whose
Catholicism, conservatism and sheer
snobbery drove its citizens to a
state of terminal misery. The city
certainly has a strong bourgeois
ethos, easy to discern in the snooty
cafés and refined restaurants of
the city centre, and in a pre-Lent
ball season that rivals that of
Vienna. But if high culture and high
society don't really turn you on,
you can always take solace in the
city's alternative nightlife or join
the crowds at the football stadium -
the local team, SV Salzburg, is one
of the few outfits outside Vienna
that enjoys a genuine mass
following.
Salzburg is buzzing twelve months
a year and there's not really a best
time at which to come. Spring and
summer bring a wealth of colour to
the city's parks and the surrounding
hills, and this period draws the
biggest tourist crowds, although the
Advent season (from the end
of November through to Christmas) is
an atmospheric and increasingly
popular period. There's a
Christkindlmarkt (Christmas market)
in the square outside the cathedral,
with stalls selling all kinds of
handicrafts alongside irredeemable
tat, and ad-hoc kiosks doling out
sausage, Schmalzbrot (bread and
dripping) and gallons of Glühwein,
bringing an outdoor party atmosphere
to the winter evenings.
Bearing in mind that there's no
real low season here, accommodation
tends to be constantly overpriced,
oversubscribed or both. Once you've
found yourself a place to stay,
however, you'll find the city to be
an easily manageable, hassle-free
place to explore. The local bus and
rail network makes Salzburg a
convenient base from which to visit
the lakes of the Salzkammergut
to the east, and the historic towns
of Hallein and Werfen
to the south. It's also handily
placed for much of southeast
Germany: Munich is only ninety
minutes away by train.
