Austria
Salzburg
A baroque old town under an unbreached medieval fortress, with Mozart's lane below it and the lakes an hour east.
Salzburg made its money hauling salt down the river and spent it on baroque: a compact old town of domes, marble squares and archbishops' palaces, wedged onto a strip between the Salzach and a wooded cliff. Hohensalzburg Fortress sits on the rock straight above it, one of the largest fully preserved castles in Europe and never taken by force. Mozart was born on a lane below, the Alps start immediately south, and the lakes of the Salzkammergut begin half an hour east.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
German
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Salzburg
The fortress one of the largest fully preserved castles in Europe, straight above the rooftops, reached by a funicular up the cliff face
Baroque at walking scale domes, marble squares, a cathedral and an archbishop's residence all packed into about a square kilometre
Mozart born and raised here, with the house on Getreidegasse and a concert calendar that barely pauses all year
The way out the Salzkammergut lakes are half an hour east, the Alps rise directly south, and both are reachable by bus
Best time to visit
Apr, Oct
14-16° days
47.798° N, 13.046° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Vienna
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Weather & when to go to Salzburg
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr, Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Salzburg
The summer here is the wet season: the heaviest rain of the year falls between May and September, and the record grades those months only ok largely because of it. High summer is also the festival stretch, when the city is at its fullest and beds are hardest to find at any sensible rate. December, January and February grade avoid - cold, grey and often under snow - though December brings the Christmas markets onto the cathedral square and the ski valleys an hour south are running. April and October are the two months that grade great, and they are the easiest visits by a distance.
Top things to do in Salzburg
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Hohensalzburg Fortress
history 👍 PopularBegun in 1077 and extended for six hundred years, it was never taken in a siege, which is why the interiors survive: a late-Gothic prince's chamber with a gilded ceiling, a mechanical barrel organ that plays over the town, and ramparts looking north to the plain and south into the Alps. A funicular climbs the cliff, or you walk up in about twenty minutes.
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Getreidegasse and Mozart's birthplace
culture arts 👍 PopularA narrow shopping lane hung with wrought-iron guild signs, some of them centuries old and now used by chain stores that had to comply. Halfway along is the yellow house where Mozart was born in 1756 and lived until his teens, kept as a museum with the family's instruments in it.
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Mirabell Palace gardens
scenic 👍 PopularFormal parterres on the right bank laid out on an axis that frames the fortress on the hill opposite, with a Pegasus fountain, a walled garden of stone dwarfs, and the flight of steps used in the film. The palace's marble hall still holds chamber concerts.
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Hellbrunn Palace and its trick fountains
history ⭐ Highly recommendedAn archbishop's pleasure villa south of the city built in 1615 with hidden water jets rigged into the stone dining table, the grottoes and the garden paths, designed to soak guests as a joke and still operated on visitors by guides who clearly enjoy it. The gardens hold the glass gazebo moved here from the film set.
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The Monchsberg walk
scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedA path along the top of the wooded cliff behind the old town, running from the fortress to the modern art museum at the far end, with the whole baroque skyline laid out below and almost nobody on it. A lift bored through the rock takes you up from the street if you would rather not climb.
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Salzburg Cathedral and the Residenz squares
historyAn early baroque cathedral on the Italian model with a bright white interior, where Mozart was baptised and later worked as organist, opening onto three linked squares of archbishop's palace, horse fountain and cathedral front. The upper floors of the residence hold the state rooms and a picture gallery.
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St Peter's Abbey, cemetery and catacombs
historyA working Benedictine abbey founded around 700, with a graveyard of wrought-iron grave markers and arcaded family vaults pressed against the cliff, and chapels cut into the rock face above it that you climb to by a stone stair.
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The Sound of Music locations
culture artsThe 1965 film was shot around the city and the lakes and brings a steady stream of visitors, most of them from outside Austria, where the film is barely known. The recognisable spots are the Mirabell steps and dwarf garden, the lake terrace at Leopoldskron, the gazebo at Hellbrunn, the abbey gates in the old town and the church at Mondsee. Bus tours cover them in an afternoon; the sites themselves are mostly free to look at.
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The summer festival
nightlife musicFounded in 1920 and now the reason high summer books out: opera, orchestral concerts and theatre staged across the city for several weeks, including a morality play performed outdoors on the cathedral square, which has opened the festival almost every year since the beginning.
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Untersberg cable car
scenicA cable car from the southern edge of the city onto a limestone massif that straddles the German border, with a plateau of bare rock, a summit cross and a view over the whole basin and back into the Alps. Walkers use it as a way down as much as up.
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Kapuzinerberg and the river bridges
scenicThe wooded hill on the right bank, climbed by a stepped path past chapels to a monastery and a view straight across at the fortress. The footbridges over the Salzach below it are the standard vantage for the postcard shot of the old town.
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Salzburger Nockerl and the local table
foodThe city's dessert is a baked sweet souffle piled into three peaks for the three hills around town, ordered for two people and rarely finished. Otherwise: dumplings, sausage from street stands beside the squares, and beer poured into stone mugs in a monastery-founded hall on a wooded slope where you rinse your own tankard at a fountain first.
Best areas to stay in Salzburg
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Altstadt
First-time visitors $$$Baroque squares under the fortress rock
Explore hotels in Altstadt →
Neustadt
Best value central $$Mirabell gardens, station, easier rates
Explore hotels in Neustadt →
Nonntal
Quiet & close $$Quiet streets below the fortress's south side
Explore hotels in Nonntal →
Riedenburg
Families & drivers $Green, residential, west of the cliff
Explore hotels in Riedenburg →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Salzburg
Getting to & around Salzburg
Getting there
Fly into Salzburg airport four km west, or arrive by train from Vienna or Munich
Flight
Salzburg W A Mozart (SZG)
Four km west of the centre, close enough that a city bus reaches the old town in about twenty minutes and a taxi in ten. It is a small airport with heavy winter charter traffic, so a lot of visitors instead fly into Munich and cross by train or coach in about two hours.
Train
Salzburg Hauptbahnhof
Fast trains from Vienna take about two and a half hours, from Innsbruck around two and from Munich under two; the station is a fifteen-minute walk or a short bus ride from the old town
Coach
The bays outside Salzburg Hauptbahnhof
Regional buses fan out from here to the Salzkammergut lakes, Hallstatt, Berchtesgaden and the ski valleys, and long-distance coaches call here too
Drive
Salzburg
On the motorway between Munich and Vienna. The old town is closed to through traffic and drivers use the garage tunnelled into the cliff, which is signposted from the ring road
Getting around
Walking
The old town is small and pedestrianised, and footbridges over the Salzach join the two halves in a couple of minutes
Free
Trolleybus
The city runs an electric trolleybus network rather than trams, and between it and the ordinary buses it covers everything a visitor needs
TBC
Bus
Regional buses reach Hellbrunn, the Untersberg cable car, Berchtesgaden and the lakes from the station and the centre
TBC
Funicular & lifts
A funicular climbs the cliff to the fortress and a separate lift runs up through the rock to the modern art museum on top of the Monchsberg
TBC
Bike
Flat riverside paths run the length of the city and out into the countryside in both directions, and locals genuinely commute on them
TBC
Taxi
Easy to find at the station and the main squares, though almost everything central is a short walk
TBC
Day trips from Salzburg
Hallstatt and the Salzkammergut lakes
Full dayLake district
A chain of deep green lakes under limestone walls east of the city, with Hallstatt the famous one and Wolfgangsee, Mondsee and Attersee strung out along the way. Go early: the coach parties arrive mid-morning.
Getting there
car | bus | train | ferry | tour
1 hr 20 min by car, or about 2 hr 30 min by bus and train
Berchtesgaden and the Konigssee
Full dayAlpine lake
Just over the German border, a fjord-shaped lake between cliffs where electric boats run to a red-domed chapel on a spit, with a salt mine in the valley and, above it, the mountain-top house built for Hitler, reached by a bus road and a lift that only run in the snow-free months.
Getting there
bus | car | ferry | tour
45 min by bus or car south
Werfen
Full dayIce cave & castle
The largest ice cave in the world, high on a cliff above the valley and reached by a steep bus, a cable car and a climb, lit by carbide lamps and open only in the warmer months. On the crag opposite stands a fortress with a falconry display flown over the valley.
Getting there
train | car | bus
50 min by train or car south
Sankt Wolfgang and the Schafberg
Full dayLake village & rack railway
A lake village with a carved late-Gothic altarpiece in its church and a steam rack railway that grinds up to a ridge with half the Salzkammergut laid out below. The railway runs in the warm months only; boats cross the lake to save the road.
Getting there
bus | car | train | ferry
1 hr 15 min by bus east
Hallein and the Durrnberg salt mine
Half daySalt workings
The salt that paid for the baroque, mined in the hill above a small town upriver. Visitors ride a mine train in overalls, slide between levels on the miners' wooden chutes and cross an underground lake in the dark.
Getting there
train | bus | car
25 min by train south
A little history of Salzburg
There was a Celtic and then a Roman settlement here called Iuvavum, but the city as it stands is the work of its archbishops. From the eighth century they ruled Salzburg as a church state inside the Holy Roman Empire - princes in their own right, answerable to nobody local - and they funded it on the salt mined in the hills upriver, which is what the name means. Around 1600 a run of ambitious archbishops demolished much of the medieval town and rebuilt it as an Italianate baroque city, importing architects from over the Alps. The same men expelled the province's Protestants in the early 1730s, and thousands walked north to Prussia in winter.
Mozart was born into this in 1756, worked for the archbishop, fell out with him and left for Vienna. The church state was secularised in the Napoleonic years, passed between Bavaria and Austria and joined Austria for good in 1816, after which the city spent a century as a quiet provincial capital. The summer festival founded in 1920 rebuilt its reputation; a 1965 film added a second, entirely separate stream of visitors that the city has never quite known what to do with. The old town went onto the UNESCO list in 1996.
A monastery and bishopric are founded on the salt route
Work begins on the fortress on the rock above the town
The archbishops rebuild the medieval town as an Italian baroque city
The archbishop expels the province's Protestants, who walk north into Prussia
Mozart is born on Getreidegasse
The former church state joins Austria permanently
The summer festival is founded and the city's cultural calendar with it
The old town is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+43
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Salzburg
▸ How many days do you need in Salzburg?
Two covers the old town, the fortress and the gardens without rushing. A third is worth having for Hellbrunn and a lake, or for the ice cave and castle south of the city, which take most of a day between them.
▸ Is the Sound of Music tourism worth doing?
It depends whether the film means anything to you. It is barely known in Austria and the locations are scattered, so a bus tour is the efficient way to see them in an afternoon. If you would rather do it yourself, the Mirabell steps, the dwarf garden and the Hellbrunn gazebo are all free to walk up to.
▸ Does it really rain that much?
Yes. The wettest months here are the summer ones, which is why the record grades May to September only ok despite the warmth. Bring rain gear whatever the season and keep an indoor day in reserve - the fortress, the residence galleries and the salt mine all work in the wet.
▸ Can you ski from Salzburg?
Not from the city itself, which sits low on the plain. The province's ski valleys start about an hour south by road with buses running in winter, so plenty of people base here and travel out. The record grades midwinter avoid on general comfort, and that is about the city, not the snow.
▸ When is Salzburg busiest?
The summer festival weeks, when the city fills and rooms are scarce, followed by the Christmas market period and any warm weekend. Early mornings in the old town are quiet all year, because most of the crowd arrives on day trips from further away.
More in Austria
Graz
Austria's second city: a UNESCO old town under a clock-tower hill, the world's largest historic armoury, and Styria's wine road an hour south.
✓ best Apr-May, Sep-OctHallstatt
The world's oldest salt mine above a village wedged between cliff and lake - extraordinary, and best seen outside the middle of the day.
✓ best Apr, Jun-SepInnsbruck
An imperial old town at the foot of a rock wall, with a cable car from the centre to the ridge and a ring of ski valleys on the bus map.
✓ best Apr-Oct