Things To Do in Salzburg Austria

Festival City

Salzburg exists in a state of near-permanent festival. The Salzburg Festival, held each July and August, is one of the most prestigious events in the classical music and opera calendar, drawing performers and audiences from around the world to a program that spans opera, drama, and concerts across multiple venues in the old town. The Easter Festival and the Whitsun Festival extend the season, and the city's concert program runs year-round in venues that include a former riding school carved into the rock of the Mönchsberg.

Old Town and Fortress

Salzburg's UNESCO-listed old town is one of the best-preserved Baroque city centers in central Europe. The Getreidegasse, a narrow shopping street lined with guild signs and arcaded buildings, leads to the cathedral square where the architecture achieves a set-piece grandeur that the city's history — as seat of a powerful prince-archbishop — fully justifies. Above it all sits the Hohensalzburg Fortress, one of the largest and best-preserved medieval castles in Europe, reachable by funicular and offering views over the city and the Alps.

Alpine Setting

Salzburg is surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the Alpine landscape begins where the suburbs end. The Untersberg, a limestone massif visible from the city center, has hiking trails accessible in summer from a cable car station fifteen minutes outside the city. The Salzkammergut lake district — a region of glacial lakes, forested mountains, and well-preserved small towns — begins just east of the city and is one of the most beautiful areas of Austria. The setting is not incidental to Salzburg; it is part of what the city is.

Food and Pastries

Austrian food in Salzburg means hearty mountain cooking: pork, dumplings, trout from the local rivers, and a range of pastries and breads that vary subtly from those found in Vienna. The Mozartkugel — a confection of marzipan and dark chocolate — was invented here and is sold in dozens of variations across the city. The market on Universitätsplatz, held daily, is a good place to find local produce, and the old town cafés maintain the Austrian tradition of serious cake-making.

The Salzburg Festival, Mozart and the City's Musical Identity

Salzburg's identity as a music city is more completely embodied in its built environment and institutional life than any other city in the world. The birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at Getreidegasse 9, one of the most visited literary and musical heritage sites in Europe, and the Mozart Residence on the Makartplatz together document the conditions of the composer's early life and working environment. The Salzburg Festival, founded in 1920 and held each July and August across the Grosses Festspielhaus, the Felsenreitschule (the outdoor riding school carved into the Mönchsberg cliff face), and the Haus für Mozart, is the most prestigious summer music and theatre festival in the world, drawing an audience of 270,000 to over 200 performances and commanding ticket prices that reflect demand from an international audience prepared to travel specifically for the program. The Mozarteum University, one of the leading music conservatories in the German-speaking world, sustains a permanent population of music students and faculty whose presence gives the city a working musical life that continues beyond the festival season and makes the association with the composer something more than a heritage brand.

The Salzkammergut, Hallstatt and the Landscape Around Salzburg

The landscape around Salzburg is among the most celebrated in the Alpine world, and the city's position at the edge of the Salzkammergut lake district gives it access to natural scenery that has attracted visitors since the Romantic period. Hallstatt, 75 kilometres east and reached by a combination of train and ferry across the Hallstättersee, is the village whose setting between a vertical mountain face and a glacial lake has made it the most photographed village in Austria and a UNESCO World Heritage Site for both its natural setting and its archaeological significance: the Hallstatt culture, the first phase of the European Iron Age, takes its name from the salt mines above the village worked continuously for 7,000 years. The Wolfgangsee, the Mondsee, and the Fuschlsee each provide swimming, boating, and lakeside walking within an hour of Salzburg. The Hohenwerfen fortress, 40 kilometres south in the Salzach valley, is a 12th-century castle on a rock promontory that is visible from the motorway and whose falconry demonstrations and interior displays make it one of the most complete medieval fortress experiences in Austria. The Untersberg, directly accessible from the city by cable car, provides the most extensive high-plateau walking and panoramic views of Salzburg, the Bavarian plain, and the surrounding Alps from any single ascent. The Hellbrunn Palace, 4 kilometres south and accessible by bicycle along the river path, is the most entertaining baroque pleasure garden in Austria: the 17th-century Archbishop Wolf Dietrich commissioned trick fountains throughout the garden that were designed to soak unsuspecting guests, and these practical jokes — still operational — give the visit a physical immediacy absent from more reverential heritage sites. The Christmas Market in front of Salzburg Cathedral, operating in late November and December and one of the oldest and most atmospheric in the German-speaking world, draws visitors for the combination of the baroque setting, the mulled wine, and the handcraft stalls under the cathedral facade. The Salzburg Museum in the New Residence presents the city's history from its Celtic and Roman origins through the prince-archbishopric to the present in permanent galleries that provide the most complete contextualisation of the city's architectural and musical heritage available in a single location.