A night in Salzburg

Holiday Ratings
Recommended days	2
Budget	£
Difficulty	Easy

Visiting

A night in Salzburg isn’t as easy as you’d think as Salzburg is not well connected to UK flight hubs. In winter there are a lot more flights available as it is in skiing country but not so much in August. Covid further limits flight options so we opted to fly to Munich and then drive from there.

My Experience

This was our first break for a long time, the Chinese plague having forced us to cancel three previously booked holidays. The weather was unusually glorious when we headed for our hotel, ready to depart early the following morning.

Of course this morning, after two weeks of waking around 4AM, by body decided it needed a lie in. Deb actually woke me up which was a momentous event in itself! We sorted ourselves, grabbed the free breakfast bag and were on the coach to the airport before 7. Although things were slower due to covid – more queues and organisation – we still got through security 90 mins before departure time and then had nothing to do as very few places were open. Boarding was very regimented and we had a pleasant flight, catching up on Our Girl before landing to a blisteringly hot Munich.

The case seemed to take ages to arrive so I picked up the hire car and left Deb to it. By the time she’d reached me I had worked out how to change the menu system to English and how to set our destination country to Austria! The car was lovely, CLA Mercedes with an electronic dash. Still had manual seats though which threw me for a while!
It seemed a very long drive to Salzburg although it should only have been an hour and a half but it took closer to 3 hours due to very sluggish motorway traffic.

Our Accommodation

We arrived at Motel One, on the banks of the river Salzach in Salzburg to find the last parking spot had just been taken. I checked in and carried the cases to the room while Deb sat in the car then we hunted for a local space. Back in the hotel it was a very quick turnaround to head out into the town. I’d chosen this hotel mostly because of the location – it was on the riverbank (easy to navigate to for me!) and about 20 minutes walk from the castle and old town.

Salzburg Old Town

Salzburg made its money from trading in salt, the name literally means Salt Fortress and there are lots of salt mines in the area, obviously that’s on our list! It was a lovely walk along the riverbank, we saw plenty of the distinctive Austrian onion tipped spires and the castle definitely dominated the view. We crossed one of the bridges into the old town, wandered for a bit as we lost sight of the castle due to the tall buildings and then eventually found the funicular entrance.

HohenSalzburg

The castle was about €12 each as we didn’t want to see the staterooms and we actually spent about 3 hours there.
Unusually, the castle was actually owned by the Archbishop rather than a secular magnate and I think I read it was never actually captured. It was originally just a Roman watchtower and then expanded through the eleventh to fifteenth centuries to the huge structure it is today. When you see the height and sheer face of the rock it is built on it is not easy to see why the site was chosen.

Inside there were various museums on the history of the castle, medieval music, weapons and armour, medieval childrens games and the Archduke’s Foot Regiment. Although I’m sure it sounds like purgatory to some we actually spent nearly 3 hours exploring the various rooms. The panoramic photo terrace was just magnificent. The land is so flat and then the mountains just rise up from nothing, quite spectacular.

We were absolutely baking from the end of the visit, not helped by having to wear masks. We sat on the cafe terrace overlooking the town and I indulged in an iced coffee with ice cream and double cream while Deb had her penitent black coffee. Suitably refreshed we took the funicular down the hill and then ambled through the town. As it was now after 7 a lot of shops were closed but it seemed a really pleasant place to walk around and very touristy. Walking along the riverside there were lots of people sunbathing on the bank or paddling and by the time we got back to our room it was bliss to enjoy the AC.

Dinner

After a rest and freshen up we headed out for dinner. Deb had chosen Restaurant Imlauer, about 10 minutes walk away. This was an excellent decision – service was good, we were able to eat outside and the food was delicious. I had pulled chicken salad with lemon mayo dressing and Deb had half a roast chicken, both of us with spritzers as we needed a long drink! I had forgotten how disgusting cigarette smoke was though and a lot of people were smoking with their food! The place was busy so we were there quite a long time and by then we were both tired.

We walked back to the hotel, still very warm although it was nearly 10PM. The hotel’s AC was again most welcome and the wifi was also decent. The room was quiet and we did just look over the river bank for a while, enjoying the peace. Sadly there was no kettle so we couldn’t relax with a nice cuppa. After the obligatory photo sorting, catching up on work and correspondence it was gone 11.30 before we went to bed. Most unusual but an excellent first day.

I woke around 5.30 the next morning to watch a delightful sunrise, slowly illuminating the church spires and mountains on the opposite river bank. Lovely way to start the day. We had an excellent breakfast in the hotel, in fact it was too excellent. After coffee, muesli, rye bread, cheese, ham, danish pastry, yoghurt, marble cake, another coffee, fruit salad and orange juice I was replete! We waddled up to the room and finished packing before leaving our stuff in the hotel for a quick visit to Mirabelle Gardens.

Mirabelle Gardens

Mirabelle Gardens was another palace with superb ornate gardens including a dwarf garden (statues of dwarves being all the rage!), fountains and an orangery. When we arrived there was a Korean (maybe) group doing a photoshoot around one of the fountains so we left them to it as that area was in the shade anyway.

The dwarf garden was certainly a novelty and the rest of the gardens were typically formal, certainly none of the Capabilty Brown style natural settings – this was nature controlled. The gardens were clean and well maintained and had the backdrop of Salzburg Fortress.

Schafberg Mountain Railway

We left the gardens and walked around the town for a while as Deb wanted some flip flops but she couldn’t find any so we walked back up the river bank to the hotel. After checking out and loading the car we headed towards Schafberg mountain railway. This was actually the opposite direction to the next hotel but close enough to Salzburg to make it silly to drive all the way back once we were there.

This region is, I guess, like the English Lake District. Except it is obviously prettier. It also meant that the roads were clogged with motorhomes (the European equivalent to a caravan?) so progress was slow. We eventually arrived after nearly 2 hours driving and were able to park the car in the last remaining parking space at the railway station. €82 later we had our tickets and after a brief stop for an ice cream we boarded the train.

The train had 2 large carriages but we were lucky enough to get two rows to ourselves. Progress was slow (it is a pretty steep mountain, 1700m at the final station) and it barely created a breeze inside on this baking hot day where we all had to wear damned sweat masks. After about half an hour we got off at the summit station. On the way up we’d seen swathes of trees, seemingly clinging to bare rock and beautiful Austrian chalets on the hillsides as well as the occasional masochistic hiker that insisted on walking up in 35 degree heat.

I expected to just take a couple of pictures and then head to the cafe but even my cynical city head was awestruck by the sheer majesty of the lakes and mountains. All the cliches were there, azure blue lakes, jagged mountain peaks and nutters on paragliders. Every corner we took opened up a new vista so we walked for about an hour just enjoying the scenery. This was despite some hugely vertigo inducing sights and absolutely no safety precautions!

We then went into the summit cafe for an ice cream coffee for me and another puritan black coffee for Deb. We sat on the terrace enjoying the shade of the umbrella and the sugar rush from the ice cream before joining the queue for the train down the mountain. This time we weren’t as lucky and were seated next to Jabba the Hutt’s big brother and even bigger uncle. I must admit I did doze on the way down the hill so didn’t notice any sights at all!

As always it is amazing what you can see and do in a short period of time and a night in Salzburg allowed us to explore the city and see the highlights. It’s certainly somewhere you could revisit as I imagine the Christmas markets here are magical. Our last trip here was a total washout, detailed here, so it was nice to visit in the sunshine. From Salzburg, we continued to Maria Alm for a week in the Austrian Tyrol.

History

Salzburg was originally the site of a Celtic settlement and later of the Roman town of Juvavum. About 700 ce the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and the Nonnberg Nunnery were founded there by St. Rupert. Salzburg was made a bishopric by St. Boniface in 739 and was raised to an archbishopric in 798. Its archbishops were acknowledged as princes of the Holy Roman Empire in 1278, and the city became the seat of their powerful ecclesiastical principality. Among the most notable of the prince-archbishops were Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau (reigned 1587–1612), who brought Italian Renaissance architecture and styles to the city, notably by offering commissions to the Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi for public squares, a cathedral, and other buildings; Markus Sittikus von Hohenems (reigned 1612–19), who continued to rebuild the city with another Italian architect, Santino Solari; Paris, Graf (count) von Lodron (reigned 1619–53), who founded the city’s university (1622); and Leopold Anton von Firmian (reigned 1727–44).

A unique combination of scenic Alpine landscape and architectural richness has led to Salzburg’s reputation as one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Because of the building activities of its later archbishops, however, little remains of its medieval architecture, and several buildings were damaged or destroyed by fire in 1818. Its chief glories are the episcopal buildings and the burghers’ houses, displaying an Italian Renaissance and Baroque influence that earned Salzburg the designation of the “German Rome.”

References

The history above is taken from the Brittanica here

There is also an excellent article here on the Visit Salzburg page.

The castle web page is here.

The gardens web page is here.

Schafberg mountain railway information is here.