"Mozart Music and More" Salzburg by nicolaitan

Austria's fourth largest city occupies an idyllic setting straddling the Salzach River set between two imposing mountains and has given rise to two world phenomena - the genius of composer Wolfgang Mozart and the banality of the 1965 movie " The Sound of Music ". Its pastel painted Baroque Old City with window flower boxes draws more tourists per resident than Florence and offers castles, palaces, museums, churches, and gardens all centrally located and easily accessed. Numerous carefully decorated cafes, traditional restaurants, and pastry shops entice the visitor.

There is a great deal to recommend scenic Salzburg as a two or three day visit, but in all honesty we were reminded throughout that we had seen and visited better elsewhere in Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The castle, the museums, treasuries, churches, were all very nice and well presented ( although not cheap ) and certainly very convenient but were uniformly just a notch below those in other places. The people watching in the shopping areas and the upscale shops were also nice enough but limited.

A few non-international locally owned stores hidden away in side alleys pleased with clothing by local designers. And there are certain very worthwhile features unique to Salzburg. Tours devoted to the sites of " The Sound of Music " are very popular and each summer a month long concert series celebrates Mozart. A trip to a nearby salt mine was a highlight of our visit. Perhaps because we did not visit the highest rated and most expensive restaurants, we found the dining experience relatively costly and the food mediocre at best.

From the Maribell Gardens

Since the dawn of civilization, salt has been a treasured commodity, essential to human health and stated to be necessary in up to 14000 commercial applications. A Chinese pharmacology tract dating to 2700 BC discusses the use of salt in detail. Egyptian mummification used salt. By 200 BC, salt was in use as a food preservative and remained the best available until the development of refrigeration. The modern word "salary" is derived from the word for a payment made to Roman soldiers so they could purchase salt. This simple substance is important to many religions, has created and destroyed cities and empires, and been at the root of innumerable wars.

Wolf Dietrich von Reitanau

The translation of "Salzburg" summarizes its history in a very small shaker. Even its river, the Salzach, translates as Salty River for the barges it carried loaded with the region's most important product. Early settlements date to Celtic tribes in the 4th C BC. As Juvavum, the city was an important northern outpost of the Roman Empire. After the fall, the area languished coming under the control of Bavarian dukes. St. Rupert of Worms was dispatched in 699 to bring religion to the area and chose what became Salzburg as his headquarters, beginning the rebirth of the city and in the process becoming the patron saint. The name Salzburg is first documented in 755 AD. Increasing wealth accrued to the city from the beginning by taxes and tolls on barges carrying salt on the Salzach River. The city was and remained a part of Bavaria until the 14th Century then becoming an independent city ruled by a powerful archbishop-prince as a part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The 14th C saw the death of more than one third of the city from bubonic plague. In 1492, Jews not expelled from the city were burned to death. Protestants did little better, with 20000+ expelled in the dead of winter in 1731 as immortalized by Goethe's poem "Hermann and Dorothea".

The ascendancy of Salzburg culminated in the reigns of the archbishop-prince rulers Wolf Dietrich von Reitanau, Markus Sittkus, and Paris Lodron in the 17 -- 18 C. The exteme wealth derived from advances in salt mining made Salzburg one of the world's richest cities. From this period derive the Baroque masterpieces which define modern day Salzburg, admittedly many reconstructed after the bombings of WWII. All would end with the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800's, with the end of the HRE and the fall of the archbishop princes. After a series of wars ending in 1815 Salzburg would finally become a permanent part of Austria suffering declines after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 and the mass destructions of WWII. The city has gradually rebuilt itself and become a touristic and commercial center -- and the home of Red Bull energy drink. Today Salzburg welcomes tourists, a major industry for the region, reached via expressways, a regional airport connecting to cities throughout Europe, and as a major train hub.