Salzburg

Salzburg

My first trip, circa May 2005, was cold and wet: a spring downpour, around 40 degrees. My second trip, December 2024, felt like a repeat: a winter downpour, circa 35 degrees. It’s a pretty, compact city, very Baroque in taste, which would likely be even more charming to visit on a sunny day. Dress for the occasion – there are few indoor-only activities.

Like Innsbruck, this is a town I don’t immediately warm up to – it’s very crowded, with a huge influx of foreign tourists. With the centrality of the river, it reminds me of a more fortified, battle-ready version of Lucerne, Switzerland. Two nights and a full day are plenty for a visit.

Sites

If you intend to do more than one or two sites, buy the Salzburg Card, which includes free use of public transportation, as well as admission to most of the city’s museums, over a 24-, 48- or 72-hour period.

The **DomQuartier is a single attraction that includes the state rooms of the prince archbishop’s palace, and collections of religious art housed at the Cathedral Museum and the Museum of St. Peter’s Abbey, and (for an additional add-on price) **Dom Cathedral, which is notable for simply being huge, with lovely plasterwork on walls and ceiling. Overall it’s just an okay experience, more quantity than quality, but it’s still worth visiting.
About 30 minutes north, in Mattsee, the **Ferdinand Porsche Erlebniswelten fahr(T)raum Museum is definitely worth a stop (if you have a car). It’s fairly compact and takes about an hour to tour. The interior is very well done – cars and airplanes illustrating Porsche’s early inventions, with a lot of simulators and demonstrators to experience what these vehicles were like. We enjoyed it!
**Festung Hohensalzburg is a large medieval fortress – one of the largest medieval castles in Europe, in fact. Accessible via a long path or a short funicular, it towers over the town and has great views. I liked it far more on my second visit (not entirely sure I went inside the first time?), especially the gorgeous state apartments. A better visit than the DomQuartier, if you have to choose.
**Mirabellgarten: not great in the rain, but still a beautiful, carefully arranged garden with tons of flowers. Good place for a picnic.
*Mozarts Geburtshaus was not particularly worthwhile in my opinion, mobbed with people and light on artifacts. Interesting to see a traditional interior layout of the period, however.
**Stift Nonnberg: very old church and various other buildings; a convent founded around 714 and continuously occupied since. Twelfth-century murals in the nuns’ choir are considered among the best in the eastern Alps.

Dining & Hotels

Food was generally high quality (amongst the places we tried). I’d walk a little further for a better hotel next time, away from the noise of the old town and river. Hotel & Villa Auersperg Salzburg looked like an appealing option.

**Augustiner Brau Mülln: huge beer hall and garden. Looks very fun on a sunny day; the indoor section is entertaining and loud.
*Bärenwirt is about 15 minutes down the river in Müllin on foot. The restaurant claims to be in the location of a local inn which dates to the 15th or 16. Century. Our meal was a mess – good schnitzel, a remarkably bad salad, almost comically bad service involving forgotten items and having a drink spilled on the table by the waiter.
*Hotel Sacher Salzburg is a very high end place, of the ‘grand hotel’ variety. We considered it and balked at the pricing, but did stop in for a cocktail. The setting is mostly what you’d expect, quite pretty and ornate, but the service, pricing, and menus were off. It appears they’re catering to a mostly Russian crowd.
*Hotel Stein did not work out well for us. It’s a good location, and the roof-top bar/breakfast area does have a wonderful view. The backside faces a narrow alley and has no light; the staff are weirdly (uncomfortably) trying to upsell you or claim you haven’t paid at every turn; the sauna was never unlocked, etc. Just generally kind of ‘ick;’ would not recommend at all.
**Nagano is a tucked-away Japanese restaurant in one of the building passageways. The sushi rolls were excellent – better than anything we’ve had in Switzerland, California quality.
**St. Peter Stiftskulinarium claims to be Europe’s oldest restaurant: speculated to have been operating since before AD 803.Christopher Columbus, Johann Georg Faust, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are said to have been served. It’s a big, multi-level place: we ate in the cellars, charmingly decorated for the holidays. I’d call this ‘average’ on the food front, with a definite ‘for-the-tourists’ flare, but our meal was saved by a very good schnitzel and entertaining company at the next table. Perhaps my favorite part about it was the holiday market just outside the front door – the most hidden and charming spot we found for mulled wine.