Salzburg

The Hohensalzburg stands on the Festungsberg, 120 metres above the old town, and its white walls and towers are in sight from almost every street below. Begun in 1077 and enlarged by the archbishops over the centuries that followed, it is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe: a walled hilltop of courtyards, ramparts, a chapel and the princes' living quarters. The FestungsBahn, a funicular from the Festungsgasse in the old town below, makes the climb in about a minute, and a footpath winds up the same steep lane for those who would rather walk. Inside, the princes' rooms keep their late Gothic carved and gilded woodwork, and from the ramparts the view takes in the domes and roofs of the old town, the Untersberg and the Berchtesgaden Alps on one side and the open, rolling country stretching away to the north on the other.

From the fortress a path runs east along the hill to Nonnberg Abbey, a Benedictine convent founded in the early 8th century, whose late Gothic church stands on a terrace a little below the walls. The church is open to visitors, while the convent behind it is enclosed; in The Sound of Music, this is the abbey Maria leaves to become governess to the von Trapp children. Steps lead down from the abbey to the Kaigasse, a quiet lane at the edge of the old town.

Below the fortress, the cathedral fills the heart of the old town, an early baroque church of the 17th century built on Italian models, its pale marble façade and two towers facing the Domplatz. Arcades link it to the Residenz and to St Peter's Abbey and enclose the square, and the column of the Virgin at its centre is placed so that, seen from the far end, the angels on the façade seem to hold a crown above her head. Inside, beneath a high dome, the church keeps the bronze font in which Mozart was baptised the day after his birth. On the cathedral's two other sides, the Residenzplatz opens around a 17th-century fountain of rearing horses, giants and a Triton, and the Kapitelplatz has the Kapitelschwemme, a baroque horse trough with a figure of Neptune, and a view straight up to the fortress.

The Residenz, the palace of the prince-archbishops, fills one side of the Residenzplatz. Its state rooms, with painted ceilings, stucco and tapestries, and the Residenzgalerie, a collection of European painting, are part of the DomQuartier, a museum route that crosses the arches into the organ gallery of the cathedral, with a view down the nave, and continues into the museum of St Peter's Abbey.

Tucked against the Mönchsberg beside the cathedral, St Peter's is a Benedictine abbey founded at the end of the 7th century, whose courtyards lie between the cathedral and the cliff. The abbey church, Romanesque in its walls, was refitted in the 18th century with rococo stucco and paintings. Beside it, the cemetery of St Peter's is a garden of wrought-iron crosses and flower beds, closed against the cliff by arcades of family vaults, with the catacombs, small chapels cut into the rock, high in the wall above.

The Getreidegasse, the old town's main street, runs parallel to the river below the Mönchsberg, a narrow lane of tall merchants' houses whose wrought-iron signs hang out over the crowd; the international chains that trade here hang their names on iron too. Passages called Durchhäuser lead through the houses and their courtyards to the Universitätsplatz behind, a way out of the crowd and a shelter on wet days. At No. 9, a tall house with a yellow front, Mozart was born on 27 January 1756, and the family's apartment is a museum of his childhood violin, family portraits and letters; Salzburg was his home, between long journeys across Europe, until he settled in Vienna in 1781. Towards the cathedral, the lane runs on as the Judengasse, with the small square of the Alter Markt just off it, to the Mozartplatz and its statue of the composer.

The Universitätsplatz, reached through those passages, opens before the curved white front of the Kollegienkirche, the baroque university church, with a tall white interior behind it. Beyond the church, along the foot of the Mönchsberg, the Hofstallgasse is lined by the three festival halls, built into the former court stables and the rock: the Großes Festspielhaus, the Haus für Mozart and the Felsenreitschule, a former riding school whose tiers of arcades are cut into the cliff of an old quarry. Those arcades are the backdrop of the festival concert in The Sound of Music. At the end of the street, the Pferdeschwemme, a baroque horse pond, is backed by a wall painted with horses and has a sculpted horse-tamer at its centre.

The Mönchsberg is the long, wooded ridge of rock that rises straight behind the houses of the old town. A lift inside the cliff climbs from the Gstättengasse to the Museum der Moderne, a museum of modern and contemporary art whose terrace looks out over the domes and the river. From there, paths run through woods and meadows along the ridge, past old town walls and watchtowers, to the fortress, and at its far end the hill comes down at Mülln and its beer hall.

Across the Salzach, a few minutes over the Makartsteg footbridge, the Mirabell gardens are laid out in baroque beds of flowers around fountains and statues, and their main axis frames the cathedral and the fortress across the river, the classic view of the city. The Pegasus fountain, the steps and the tunnel of clipped hedges are where Maria and the children sing “Do-Re-Mi” in the film, and a small dwarf garden of stone figures lies to one side. In the palace, a staircase crowded with marble cherubs leads up to the Marble Hall, where weddings and concerts are held. Beside the gardens, the Makartplatz holds the house the Mozart family moved to in 1773, now the Mozart Residence museum, and the Holy Trinity Church; the Landestheater, the concert hall of the Mozarteum and the Marionette Theatre, where string puppets perform Mozart's operas, stand a few steps away on the Schwarzstraße.

Facing the old town across the river, the Kapuzinerberg rises steep and wooded from the right bank. Steps climb from the Linzer Gasse, the right bank's main street, past the chapels of a Way of the Cross to the Capuchin monastery, and paths go on through the woods to lookouts over the river, the old town and the fortress, past the house where the writer Stefan Zweig lived. At the foot of the hill, the Steingasse is a narrow medieval lane of tall, close-set houses parallel to the river, and from it a second stairway climbs to the monastery.

South of the old town, Hellbrunn Palace was built in the early 17th century as a summer retreat for a prince-archbishop, and its gardens hold the trick fountains made for his guests: jets hidden in the seats around a stone dining table, in grottoes and among statues, and an 18th-century mechanical theatre of figures driven by water. The fountains are seen on a guided tour from spring to autumn, and visitors get splashed. The park around the palace holds the gazebo from The Sound of Music, brought here from Leopoldskron. A city bus runs out to Hellbrunn, and the Hellbrunner Allee, a long avenue of old trees past country houses, makes the way there a walk or a bike ride. Closer to the old town, Leopoldskron Palace, a rococo palace on a large pond, stood in for the von Trapp house in the film's lake scenes, and it is seen from across the water.

The Salzburg Festival, held since 1920, fills the city from late July to the end of August with opera, drama and concerts in the three festival halls on the Hofstallgasse and in the churches, theatres and squares of the old town. Its emblem is Jedermann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play of Everyman, performed in the open air on the Domplatz against the façade of the cathedral. Seats for much of the programme go months ahead, and rooms in the city and around the nearby lakes fill early for the festival weeks. Outside the summer, Mozart Week brings the composer's music back around his birthday at the end of January, the Easter Festival fills the Großes Festspielhaus with opera and orchestral concerts, and the Mozarteum, the Marble Hall of Mirabell and the old-town churches hold concerts through the year.

Salzburger Nockerl is the city's own dessert: a soufflé of whipped egg whites baked into three golden peaks, said to stand for the hills around the old town, dusted with icing sugar and brought to the table warm, usually for two to share. The chocolate balls of marzipan and nougat named after Mozart were first made in Salzburg, and confectioners across the old town sell them. The city brews its own beer, and one beer hall is a sight in itself: at Mülln, at the far end of the Mönchsberg, the Augustiner beer hall in the monastery buildings beside the church pours beer from wooden barrels into stone mugs that guests take from the rack themselves, with food stalls in the corridor, vaulted halls and a garden under chestnut trees. On the Universitätsplatz, the green market sells bread, cheese, fruit, flowers and cured meats every day except Sunday, when most shops in the city are closed too.

In the weeks before Christmas, the Christkindlmarkt fills the Domplatz and the Residenzplatz with wooden stalls of ornaments, carvings, gingerbread, roasted almonds and hot punch, under the lit fortress on its hill. Smaller markets open in the same weeks in other squares and courtyards of the old town and on the right bank. The stalls are busiest after dark and at weekends, when rooms in the city also fill.