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History
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Although Salzburg was an urban centre of some importance under both Celts and Romans (who called it Juvavum), it was the pioneering missionary activity of eighth-century holy men who really put the city on the map. Sponsored by the Bavarians who were eager to extend their influence into the area, Frankish monk
St Rupert
was the first to establish a church here, in around 700, using it as a base from which to evangelize to Germanic tribes in the Danube basin and the neighbouring alpine valleys. He also presided over the foundation of a monastery and a nunnery on the heights (subsequently dubbed the
Monchsberg
and
Nonnberg
) overlooking the city. The most illustrious of Rupert's early successors was the Irish monk and missionary
St Virgil
, who extended the influence of the bishopric as far as Carinthia in the southeast during the second half of the eighth century. Accorded the status of
princes
by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg in 1228, the city's ecclesiastical rulers were also major feudal landowners, administering territories scattered over present-day Austria, southern Germany and northern Italy. Additionally, the city's position on the River Salzach gave it a controlling influence on the transport of
salt
from the mines at Hallein upstream, and it was from this trade that Salzburg's prince-archbishops obtained much of their wealth - salt revenues helped
Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach
(1495-1519) transform Hohensalzburg fortress into the impressive monument you see today. The city's Baroque appearance owes most to the ambitions of
Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau
(1587-1612), a great-nephew of Pope Pius IV, who purposefully recast Salzburg on the model of Rome, employing artists and craftsmen from south of the Alps to do the job. A worldly figure whose love affair with Salome Alt was an open secret, Wolf Dietrich quarrelled with Bavaria over salt revenues in 1612. His defeat led to his overthrow and imprisonment in the Hohensalzburg, where he died in 1617. The transformation of the city, however, was continued by his successors
Marcus Sitticus von Hohenems
(1612-19), who began the construction of both the cathedral and his own pleasure-palace at Schloss Hellbrunn, and
Paris Lodron
(1619-53), responsible for the archiepiscopal city-centre palace, the Residenz. The latter was especially successful in keeping Salzburg out of the religious and dynastic conflicts of the Thirty Years War, initiating a massive fortification programme in order to secure the city's continuing independence from predatory neighbours like Austria and Bavaria. Neutrality brought further prosperity, and fine buildings:
Johann Ernst von Thun
(1687-1709) was an early patron of Austria's outstanding eighteenth-century architect
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach
(1656-1723), who was responsible for two of the city's finest churches, the Dreifaltigkeitskirche and Kollegienkirche.
The old central Europe of semi-feudal statelets to which Salzburg belonged was largely swept away by the campaigns of Napoleon, with the last of the prince-archbishops, Hieronymus Graf Colloredo, fleeing in 1800 as French troops prepared to take the city. After a brief period of Bavarian rule, the city was definitively awarded to Austria by the Congress of Vienna in 1816. For much of the nineteenth century, Salzburg was a provincial centre of declining importance. However, the founding of the Mozarteum in 1870 helped to put the place back on the cultural map. Serving as both a music school of growing repute and an important archive of Mozart's works, the Mozarteum initiated various small-scale musical festivals which were grouped together in 1920 to form the backbone of the prestigious Salzburg Festival .
Salzburg remained very much in the shadow of Vienna until after World War II, when a booming economy (aided by the city's status as administrative capital of the Salzburger Land) and the growth of tourism helped generate the prosperity which is so evident in the city today. The massive success of the 1964 film
The Sound of Music
served to reaffirm Salzburg's global profile, offering visions of a beautiful little town surrounded by wholesome alpine scenery to successive generations of would-be visitors. Nowadays the town receives an annual average of 36 tourists per inhabitant, putting it in the same league as Florence or Venice in the ratio of visitors to locals. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Austria,
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