Old Town Salzburg, Austria

We spent the day checking out the Old Town Salzburg area, we used the Rick Steve’s book to do the self-guided tour. We also visited the Fortress Hohensalzburg which you can read about HERE. One of the reason’s that I love using Rick Steve’s books is that he has all the info and self guided walks already laid out, I just take the book and we follow it and he explains what we are seeing, it cuts down on so much time of research for me. Sure, I still have to decide what we’re going to do on the walk, etc but it I don’t have to do any learning about the sites prior to our visit.

We parked in the parking lot on Petersbrunnerstrasse, which was about a 6 minute walk from the area near the fortress and was where we stared the RS tour at the Kapitelplatz. The tour originally started at Mozartplatz but we just worked our way around and finished back where we started because we wanted to visit the fortress last before leaving.

Rick Steve’s has a list of 14 places to see interesting things, we seen them all but I’ll only share some of them here, otherwise this would be a really long post and too many photos!

At the Kapitalplatz we seen the giant chessboard, the horse bath, waterwheel, and popped into the bakery to get a traditional fresh roll for €1 each.

St. Peter’s Cemetery, which is the one that inspired the cemetery for The Sound of Music, has some interesting graves and some beautiful gardens.

We also paid the small entrance fee for a few of us (teenagers didn’t want to do it) to check out where the legendary medieval monks lived in the hill, up many steps to get to the top. Not for those who may have limited mobility.

It was €2,50 per adult, less for kids.

Our next stop was the Romanesque St. Peter’s Church. The churches here were impressive.

I loved the doors and how ornate they were as well.

At the market places we found some great fresh fruit and some tasty pretzels, which we had to sample.

We seen giant horse troughs along with statues and enormous paintings.

Getreidegasse the colorful main street of Old Salzburg, we loved checking out all the neat business signs hanging from the walls. There is also a McDonald’s on this street and it has free wifi.

Further down the street you’ll find Mozart’s birthplace! We took a photo of it but decided to skip the paid tour.

Another neat find was this hanging whalebone, again another reason why I adore RS…without his handy guide we probably would’ve missed this or not known what it was. It is believed to have been hung outside an import shop.

You’ll also find impressive buildings and fountains. We also learned that the Old Residenz was Wolf Dietrich’s place, and we learned about him at the Salt Mines.

The Salzburg Cathedral was our final stop and it was breathtaking. While we’ve seen some amazing churches in Europe these were the first ‘wow’ churches that my mom had seen and she was blown away.

The paintings on the ceiling were fascinating.

We had a great day walking and exploring the Old Town of Salzburg, it has a lot to offer and is easy to make a whole day out of exploring this neat city.

Know Before You Go

What: Old Town in Salzburg, Austria .

How To Get There: It’s about 6 hours 45 mins from the Spangdahlem, 5 hours 50 mins from Ramstein, 2 hours 23 mins from Garmisch, and 1 hour 45 mins from Munich. GPS Addy: It’s in the Salzburg walkplatz so we parked in the parking lot on Petersbrunnstraße, 5020 Salzburg it’s near the fortress & walkplatz.

Parking: Parking lot on Petersbrunnstraße, 5020 Salzburg it’s near the fortress & walkplatz. We were able to parking a shady area which was great for the hot day. It was €6 for 5 hours.

Cost: All the sights we seen were free, we just spent money on food and souvenirs.

Traveling with little kids: For the most part strollers are OK here, it does get a bit crowded in some areas along the street but you could make it work.

How long: Plan on at least 1 hour to walk around and check out the Old Town area, more if you plan on stopping for food, and additional time to visit Hohensalzburg Fortress.