Salzburg

Salzburg is a baroque town folded between a river and two rocks, with a fortress of white stone on the higher one that has looked down on it since 1077 and was never taken: the prince-archbishops who ruled here on the salt trade built the domes and the fountains, Italian in temper, that make the old town look like Rome moved north; and in a yellow house on the Getreidegasse, in 1756, Mozart was born, which the town has never once forgotten. Across the Salzach lie the Mirabell gardens where a film taught the world to sing on the steps; above the whole arrangement stand the Alps; and every summer the Festival brings the finest musicians alive to play under the fortress.

The traveller walks the Getreidegasse under its wrought-iron signs to Mozart's birthplace; crosses the cathedral square and the Residenz to the funicular and rides it up to the fortress for the view of domes, river and mountains; climbs the Mönchsberg for the modern museum and the terrace; crosses to Mirabell for the gardens and the steps; hears music — a chamber concert in the fortress, an evensong in the cathedral, the Festival if the tickets allow, or the buskers who are often conservatory students; eats a Nockerl the size of a mountain; and, with a day, takes the boat on the lakes of the Salzkammergut or the tram up the Untersberg.

The Guide's honesty: Salzburg is small, beautiful and visited by everyone, and its old town fills by late morning — the early hours, the hills and the right bank are the traveller's own —; the Festival tickets are scarce and dear, and the town's ordinary musical life, year-round, is superb and cheap; the film's fans are many and the tours cheerfully commercial, and the town treats them with a patient smile; the Mozartkugeln in silver paper from Fürst are the originals; and the rain comes off the mountains without warning, which is why the arcades exist.