Salzburg & The Salzkammergut, Austria — Bella Via Travels
Austria
Salzburg & The Salzkammergut
Mozart, mountains and mirror lakes
Salzburg is the most beautiful city in the Alps — a baroque capital built on the banks of the Salzach, with the Hohensalzburg fortress rising above it and the mountains behind, and a musical culture that has been producing extraordinary performances since Mozart was born here in 1756.
The Altstadt of Salzburg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site — a compact baroque city of extraordinary completeness, with the Getreidegasse, the Residenzplatz, the Dom and the Mirabellgarten all within walking distance of each other. The Salzburg Festival, held every summer in July and August, is one of the great music festivals in the world.
The Salzkammergut, to the east of Salzburg, is a landscape of extraordinary beauty — a region of lakes, mountains and salt mines that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. Hallstatt, on the shore of the Hallstattersee, is the most photographed village in Austria — a cluster of painted houses on a narrow ledge between the lake and the cliff, with a salt mine above that has been worked for three thousand years.
The Wolfgangsee, the Mondsee and the Attersee are the most beautiful of the Salzkammergut lakes — each with its own character, its own swimming and its own particular quality of light. Bella Via designs Salzburg itineraries that combine the city with the lakes and the mountains.
“Hallstatt at dawn, with the lake still and the mountains reflected in the water — it is one of the great views in Austria.”
What to Expect
The Bella Via Experience in Salzburg & The Salzkammergut
The Salzburg Festival
One of the great music festivals in the world — opera, concerts and theatre in the city of Mozart's birth, every July and August.
Hallstatt
The most photographed village in Austria — painted houses on a narrow ledge between the lake and the cliff, with a salt mine above that has been worked for three thousand years.
The Hohensalzburg Fortress
One of the best-preserved medieval castles in Europe, rising above the city on a rocky outcrop — with views of the Salzach valley and the Alps beyond.
Mondsee
A small lakeside town at the northern edge of the Salzkammergut, with a Baroque abbey church whose yellow facade is one of the most recognisable in Austria — and whose interior was used for the wedding scene in The Sound of Music. The lake itself is the warmest in the region, ringed by meadows and the foothills of the Salzkammergut mountains.
The Sound of Music
The story of the von Trapp family is woven into the landscape of Salzburg and the lakes — the Mirabell Gardens, the Leopoldskron Palace, the Mondsee abbey, the Nonnberg convent. Bella Via plans visits that go beyond the tour buses, finding the quieter corners of the story and the places that the film made famous but the crowds have not yet reached.
The Salt Mines
The Salzkammergut takes its name from the salt that has been mined here since the Bronze Age — the Hallstatt salt mine is the oldest in the world, and a visit underground, by miners' slide and wooden boat across a subterranean lake, is one of the most unusual experiences in Austria.
The Lakes — Fuschlsee, Mondsee, Wolfgangsee & Attersee
Four lakes of distinct character within an hour of Salzburg — the Fuschlsee small and intimate, with a castle hotel on its shore; the Mondsee warm and sociable; the Wolfgangsee dramatic, with the pilgrimage church of St Wolfgang and the White Horse Inn of operetta fame; the Attersee the largest and deepest, beloved of Klimt, who painted its shores every summer for fifteen years. Bella Via plans itineraries that move between them, staying on the water and arriving by boat where possible.
Werfen
A small market town in the Salzach valley thirty minutes south of Salzburg, dominated by the Hohenwerfen fortress — a medieval castle on a sheer rock above the river, with a falconry display that is one of the finest in Europe. Below the valley floor, the Eisriesenwelt is the largest accessible ice cave in the world, a cathedral of frozen waterfalls and ice formations that extends for forty kilometres into the mountain. Bella Via combines Werfen with a night in the valley as a half-day excursion from Salzburg or a stop on the road south to the Tyrol.
Salzburg and the Salzkammergut reward those who arrive in the right season and stay long enough to find the version of them that the guidebooks have not yet discovered.