Home > Rick on TV > Guide to Shows > Salzburg and Surroundings

Salzburg and Surroundings

This is a quick and handy source for details on the sights, hotels, tour guides and restaurants featured in the "Salzburg and Surroundings" show. For much more (and updates), see this year's edition of Rick Steves' Germany & Austria guidebook.

Mozart Wohnhaus

This reconstruction of Mozart's second home (his family moved here when he was 17) is the most informative Mozart sight in town. The English-language audioguide (included with admission, 90 min) provides a fascinating insight into Mozart's life and music, with the usual scores, old pianos, and an interesting 30-minute film (#17 on your audioguide for soundtrack) that runs continuously (€6, or €9.50 for combo-ticket that includes Mozart's Birthplace in the old town, daily 9:00–18:00, July–Aug until 19:00, last entry 1 hour before closing, allow at least 1 hour for visit, Makartplatz 8, tel. 0662/8742-2740).

Hohensalzburg Fortress

Built on a rock 400 feet above the Salzach River, this fortress was never really used. That's the idea. It was a good investment — so foreboding, nobody attacked the town for a thousand years. The city was never taken by force, but when Napoleon stopped by, Salzburg wisely surrendered. After a stint as a military barracks, the fortress was opened to the public in the 1860s by Emperor Franz Josef. Today it remains one of Europe's mightiest castles, dominating Salzburg's skyline and offering incredible views.

Cost: Your ticket includes the price of the funicular up and down, as well as admission to the fortress grounds and all the museums inside — whether you want to see them or not (€9.80, €22.60 family ticket, €8.60 per person if you hike to the castle without using the funicular).

Hours: The complex is open daily year-round (May-Sept 9:00–18:00, July–Aug until 19:00, Oct–April 9:30–17:00, last entry 30 min before closing, tel. 0662/8424-3011). On nights when there's a concert, the castle grounds are free and open until 21:30.

Augustiner Braustubl

Augustiner Bräustübl, a monk-run brewery, is rustic and crude. It's closed for lunch, but on busy nights, it's like a Munich beer hall with no music but the volume turned up. When it's cool, you'll enjoy a historic setting with beer-sloshed and smoke-stained halls. On balmy evenings, it's a Monet painting with beer breath under chestnut trees in the garden. Local students mix with tourists eating hearty slabs of schnitzel with their fingers or cold meals from the self-serve picnic counter, while children frolic on the playground kegs. For your beer: Pick up a half-liter or full-liter mug (schank means self-serve price, bedienung is the price with waiter service), pay the lady, wash your mug, give Mr. Keg your receipt and empty mug, and you will be made happy. Waiters don't bring food — instead, go up the stairs, survey the hallway of deli counters, and assemble your own meal (or, as long as you buy a drink, you can bring in a picnic). Classic pretzels from the bakery and spiraled and salty radishes make great beer even better. For dessert — after a visit to the strudel kiosk — enjoy the incomparable floodlit view of old Salzburg from the nearby Müllnersteg pedestrian bridge and a riverside stroll home (open daily 15:00–23:00; about a 15-min walk along the river — with the river on your right — from the Staatsbrücke bridge, head up Müllner Hauptstrasse northwest along the river and ask for "Müllnerbräu," its nickname; Augustinergasse 4, tel. 0662/431-246). Don't be fooled by second-rate gardens serving the same beer nearby. Augustiner Bräustübl is a huge, 1,000-seat beer garden within the Augustiner brewery.

Sporer Family

Schnapps Pit Stop: On the right at #39, Sporer serves up homemade spirits (€1.30 per shot). This has been a family-run show for a century — fun-loving, proud, and English-speaking. Nuss is nut, Marille is apricot (typical of this region), the Kletzen cocktail is like a super-thick Baileys with pear, and Edle Brande are the stronger schnapps. The many homemade firewaters are in jugs at the end of the bar. Austrian wines are sold by the Achtel (eighth of a liter).

Sommerrodlebahn

If you're driving between Salzburg and Hallstatt, you'll pass two luge rides. Each is a ski lift that drags you backward up the hill as you sit on your go-cart. At the top, you ride the cart down the winding metal course. It's easy: Push to go, pull to stop, take your hands off your stick and you get hurt.

Each course is just off the road with easy parking. The ride up and down takes about 15 minutes. The one near Fuschlsee (closest to Salzburg, look for Sommerrodelbahn sign) is half as long and cheaper (€4/ride, 1,970 feet, tel. 06235/7297). The one near Wolfgangsee (look for Riesenschutzbahn sign) is a double course, more scenic with grand lake views (€6/ride, €40/10 rides, 4,265 feet, each track is the same speed, tel. 06137/7085). Courses are open Easter through October from 10:00 to 18:00 (July–Aug 9:30–19:00) — but will generally close in bad weather. These are fun, but the concrete courses near Reutte are better.

Hallstatt Salt Mine

If you have yet to tour a salt mine, consider Hallstatt's — which claims to be the oldest in the world. First you'll ride a steep funicular high above the town (€8.50 round-trip, €5.10 one-way, 4/hr, daily May–mid-Sept 9:00–18:00, mid-Sept–Oct 9:00–16:30, closed Nov–April). Then you'll hike 10 minutes to the mine (past excavation sites of many prehistoric tombs and a glass case with 2,500-year-old bones--but there's little to actually see). Report back 10 minutes before the tour time on your ticket, check your bag, and put on old miners' clothes. Then hike 200 yards higher in your funny outfit to meet your guide, who escorts your group down a tunnel dug in 1719. Inside the mountain, you'll watch a slide show, follow your guide through several caverns as you learn about mining techniques over the last 7,000 years, see a silly laser show on a glassy subterranean lake, peek at a few waxy cavemen with pickaxes, and ride the train out. The highlight for most is sliding down two banisters (the second one is longer and ends with a flash for an automatic souvenir photo that clocks your speed — see how you did compared to the rest of your group after the tour). The presentation is very low-tech, as the mining company owns all three mine tours in the area and sees little reason to invest in the experience when they can simply mine the tourists. While the tour is mostly in German, the guide is required to speak English if you ask...so ask (salt mine tour-€15.50, €21 combo-ticket for mine and funicular round-trip saves €3, you can buy mine tickets at cable-car station — note the time and tour number on your ticket, daily May–mid-Sept 9:30–16:30, mid-Sept–Oct 9:30–15:00, closed Nov–April, the 16:00 funicular departure catches the last tour at 16:30, no children under age 4, arrive early or late to avoid summer crowds, dress for the constant 47-degree temperature, tel. 06132/200-2400). If you skip the funicular, the scenic 40-minute hike back into town is (with strong knees) a joy.

At the base of the funicular, notice train tracks leading to the Erbstollen tunnel entrance. This lowest of the salt tunnels goes many miles into the mountain, where a shaft connects it to the tunnels you just explored. Today, the salty brine from these tunnels flows 25 miles through the world's oldest pipeline — made of wood until quite recently — to the huge modern salt works (next to the highway) at Ebensee.

Restaurant Bräugasthof

Restaurant Bräugasthof has great lakeside tables. You can feed the swans while your trout is being cooked. Under new management in 2007, it hopes to offer good traditional plates. For now, the only certainty is that its lakeside dining, on a balmy evening, offers the best ambience in town (Seestrasse 120, tel. 06134/8221).