Salzburg Day 2: Hohensalzburg, Untersberg, Love Locks, Mirabellgarten, & More

Section of the Reißzug

Saturday morning we got up, ate breakfast at our hotel, and headed out to see the Hohensalzburg Castle/Fortress. We got up to the castle by riding the public funicular, which was built in 1892 and was the world's first water-ballast funicular. Interestingly enough, there is another private funicular called the Reißzug going up the castle too. The Reißzug is the oldest funicular in the world, and may even be the oldest railway in the world too. It was pulled by horses, and at some points by human slaves.

The fortress castle itself was very large. Many of the different buildings within it were labeled, which was good.

Panoramic view from Bernhard-von-Rohr-Bastion (enlarge to see better)

The building to the left is the granary

Castle Courtyard with the St. George Chapel to the left

Interestingly enough, the site of the Hohensalzburg Castle has been occupied since the stone age. The beginnings of the current castle though started in 1077 by Archbishop Gebhard, but much was added to it during the centuries following. The strategically located castle was never captured through battles, though it surrendered without a battle to French troops under Napoleon in 1800. The only time the castle was actually under siege was during a peasant uprising in 1525.

While at the castle, we visited the museum, which was quite interesting. (However, pictures weren't allowed there, so we don't have any from that part of our visit.) Among other things, we saw the decorative state rooms of the castle, various instruments of medieval torture, and various armor and weaponry. We especially liked the way the room about warfare was set up so that stick steel soldiers wearing armor looked like they were coming straight at you as you entered the room. Arrows and spears suspended from the ceiling on clear strings were all aimed directly at the doorway as well. The torture instruments and tools were painful to even look at. Apparently during medieval times and even for awhile thereafter, a confession was required from prisoners before a sentence could be given, and therefore prisoners were tortured in order to get the needed confessions from them. Prisoners were tortured until about 1800.

After seeing the museum, we walked around a little more before heading off to take a guided tour of some areas of the castle.

Below is the castle's "Horse Gate." There are seven "keyhole embrasures" (some of which are just visible at the top of the picture) and three larger embrasures above the gate. The larger embrasures were for canons while the small keyhole embrasures were for throwing hand grenades and shooting arrows, missiles, or guns.

View from the Kuenburg Bastion

On the guided tour we learned more about the history of the castle and saw a few rooms, including the "Torture Chamber." Apparently this room gets its name from the torture instruments stocked here, such as the wheel pictured below which was apparently used to drop on people, crushing their bones. However, the room was never used for torture. Since criminal cases were not tried in the castle, there was no need to torture confessions out of anyone here. The room was actually used as a prison cell.

The tour also took us up to the top of the "Reck Tower," from which we had a nice view.

Below is the Hohen Stock (building) and the Palace Bastion (walls), which was built to act like a castle within the larger castle.

After seeing the castle we headed to the river for a boat tour. Our Salzburg Card pamphlet and the sign at the dock said that the tours ran from March to October. However, it didn't seem like it was opened even though it was the first of March. Confused (just like other tourists and visitors around us who seemed to be discussing the same thing), we called a number on the sign. In doing so, we learned that boat tours actually wouldn't start until March 15th. Austin was particularly disappointed.

Next we ate lunch. We just grabbed some quick food items from a local grocer and sat down next to the river along a bike path to eat. As we ate, Austin pointed out the dogs of all the people walking/bicycling by. Then a large white furry dog passed by with a guy on a bicycle and Austin pointed to it and exclaimed, "Sheep!" That made us really laugh. We could see where he was coming from though given the dog's looks.

Since the boat tour didn't work out, we headed to the Mönchsberglift - basically a set of elevators taking visitors up to the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art and a really great panoramic terrace. We had no interest in the modern art, but we thoroughly enjoyed the view. There were trails going around the top of the ridge along the old city wall, so we walked around up there a little bit too.

Old City Wall

We didn't have much time left before our card expired, but there was one last thing we really wanted to fit in, which was the cable-car up to the summit of the Untersberg. Untersberg is the tallest of the mountains next to Salzburg. We rode the bus back to our car and then drove to the cable car station. The cars ran every half hour, and we arrived just a little late for the 2:30 run. That meant we had to wait until 3:00 to go up, and that we would have to pay more to go down if we didn't get on the 3:30 car going down. Luckily, the cable car worker was really nice and scanned our cards at the top for our return trip to the bottom so that we didn't have to worry about how long we stayed up there.

I think that is the steepest cable car ride I have ever been on. The views all the way up were fantastic, not to meantion the views at the top. Our pictures hardly do it justice. This was our favorite activity of the day.

There were two peaks to hike to from the top, but we only went to the closer one. The other one would have taken us too long and been difficult to walk to on the slick snow with Austin. Both peaks had crosses on their tops.

Here we are at the top!

 

To give an idea of where we were at, the Untersburg is the highest mountain seen in the picture below, which was taken from the Bernhard-von-Rohr Bastion of the Hohensalzburg Castle.

We ended up taking the the 4:00 cable car back down. From there we headed back into Salzburg. By this time our card had expired, but there were still some things we thought we could see that didn't have entry fees. For example, we thought it would be fun to see a couple of the places that were used in the filming of The Sound of Music, so drove by the spot we could see the Leopoldskron Palace, which acted as the façade of the von Trapp residence.

Leopoldskron Palace

When we first went to the Old Town area of Salzburg, we saw that the Makartsteg, a pedestrian bridge, was covered with love locks. For anyone not familar with this tradition, the idea is to place a lock on the bridge and then throw the key into the river where it will be lost forever. It is supposed to symbolize the unbreakable love of those placing locks there, since the lock is permanently affixed to its spot after the key is gone. It was actually fun to see all the different locks on the bridge. Some were quite unique, like the fish lock pictured below. A number of them looked to be professionally made and personalized. We also saw some long bicycle locks that had been woven through the fence to shape a heart.

We also had seen locks for sale in many of the tourist shops, so we decided to join in the tradition and place our own love lock on the chain fence lining the bridge just for fun.

Here is Nate ready to drop his key in the river where it will be lost forever.

Next we headed over to the Mirabellgarten, which also was a filming location in The Sound of Music. We were pleasantly surprised to find that flowers had already been planted in much of the garden area, though the planting wasn't finished. The gardens really were beautiful. I wish we could have seen them when there was a little more daylight.

Nate and Austin in front of the Mirabell Palace

After seeing the gardens we stopped by some gift shops briefly before eating dinner and then driving back to our apartment. Many gift shops we saw offered mostly the same sorts of things, but there were a few more unique ones, like the shop pictured below. It was full of various blown-out eggs that had been painted with scenes or designs, or otherwise decorated. While some other shops also offered similar eggs, this one shop was full of row after row of them. If I hadn't been worried about it breaking on our way home, I may have even bought one. We couldn't help but wonder who painted/decorated them all.