Mountains, music and sweets mit Schlag: Austria’s charms are irresistible, and draw tens of millions of tourists annually.
Two of the nation’s most populous cities, Salzburg and Vienna are – justifiably – additionally two of its hottest. However which one gives the higher introduction to Austrian artwork and tradition? Under, two well-published specialists supply the case for his or her most well-liked place.
Salzburg: Austria in a (superbly baroque) nutshell
Kerry Walker misplaced her coronary heart to Salzburg when she first authored the Lonely Planet Austria information in 2007. Since then, she has roamed each crowd-free alley and climbed (nearly) each mountain on town’s fringes.
Nowhere says “go to Austria!” like Salzburg – not even Vienna. That is, in spite of everything, the place Mozart was born, acquired off to a flying begin as a composer at age 5, and the place his tunes nonetheless reverberate in gilded live performance halls which might be amongst Europe’s best.
This metropolis was constructed grand and wonderful by filthy-rich and madly formidable prince-archbishops, who plonked a large fortress excessive on a hill 900 years in the past and went on to fill the Altstadt (now a Unesco World Heritage website) with palaces, galleries, domes, church buildings and baroque plazas. And it was right here that everybody’s favourite yodeling nun – Maria von Trapp (performed Julie Andrews) – taught the world to sing in The Sound of Music.
Then, in fact, there may be that cinematic Alpine backdrop you possibly can’t fairly take your eyes off, which is able to ship your soul hovering increased than Julie’s octave-leaping vocals.
Vienna has its whirl of Habsburg palaces, galleries stuffed to the rafters with Klimts, espresso homes haunted by the ghosts of Sigmund Freud and Stalin, and the stately Ringstrasse boulevard. However its grandeur might be overwhelming, and town can really feel standoffish.
Not so with Salzburg. Sitting astride the turquoise Salzach River, this completely sized and laid-out metropolis is filled with a lifetime’s value of tradition and historical past – however you want by no means battle site visitors or a lot as hop on a tram or U-Bahn to see it. All you want is cobble-friendly sneakers (and stout boots for straying into the mountains). And its petite proportions imply you possibly can dive deep in an extended weekend.
Whereas the remainder of the world rushes via the twenty first century, Salzburg rolls again the centuries. The Residenz palace is a joyous romp via time, with its chandelier-lit state residences and gallery brimming with work by Rembrandt, Rubens and their ilk. Trot a couple of minutes uphill and also you’re at Stift Nonnberg, a Benedictine abbey echoing with 1300 years of historical past and festooned with Romanesque frescoes. (This was the place novice nun Maria proved an issue in The Sound of Music.) Arrive at 6:45am, because the solar rises and the nuns sing Gregorian chorales, for a hairs-on-end second. From right here, you possibly can stroll above town’s spires and rooftops to Salzburg’s cake-topper fortress, Festung Hohensalzburg, and alongside the steeply wooded cliffs of Mönchsberg to Museum der Moderne, with its high-caliber exhibitions of up to date artwork.
Not dangerous for a morning’s stroll, proper?
Again at floor stage, there’s extra: the fabulously baroque Dom cathedral and Erzabtei St Peter, the oldest abbey-church and monastery on this planet, based by an itinerant bishop named Rupert in 696. Skip throughout the river and also you attain Schloss Mirabell’s gardens, with roses, legendary sculptures and fortress-framing views that drive Instagrammers wild.
Meals? Salzburg pushes all the precise buttons: whether or not you need to fill your tankard on the pump and scoff pork knuckles and big pretzels beneath the chestnut timber within the beer backyard at monk-founded Augustiner Bräustübl; dig a dainty fork into chocolate cake at Sacher (yep, Salzburg has posh coffeehouses, too); or go all out with a romantic date-night dinner on the Michelin-starred likes of The Glass Backyard (who’s in for chamois haunch with spruce, blueberry and wooden sorrel?).
And there’s at all times a purpose to mud off your dirndl or lederhosen on this high-spirited metropolis, with the get together peaking throughout summer season’s epic, five-week Salzburg Competition, one of many world’s best celebrations of opera, drama and classical music. At Christmas, Salzburg sparkles festively, with markets, snow dusting the encompassing Alps and carollers singing “Stille Nacht”(“Silent Evening”), which was penned proper right here by homegrown priest Joseph Mohr in 1816.
Concerning the crowds: sure, if you happen to mosey up in August you’ll discover Salzburg match to burst. If you happen to want issues quieter, go to in spring and autumn as an alternative. However even in summer season, you possibly can escape to the river or leg it into the mountains. Untersberg provides you a correct blast of the Alps, 1973m (6475ft) up, and you’ll hoof throughout ragged karst heights to Bavaria. Or take a picnic to Schloss Hellbrunn, the place Prince-Archbishop Markus Sittikus dodged his religious duties and threw drunken events in unique gardens stuffed with trick fountains within the seventeenth century.
If you would like the full-on Austrian dream, Salzburg, within the nation’s Alpine heartland, delivers. With a grumble, even the Viennese will admit that.
Vienna: grandeur that is aware of no bounds
Luke Waterson used to dwell one hour exterior Vienna, and has written in regards to the metropolis for shops akin to Journey.com and Morning Calm journal .
From its landmark sights to consuming out and leisure, from its haughtiest baroque palace to its most daring ultramodern constructing, Vienna casually swats away most opponents in Europe who dare to problem its attraction. And it gained’t even break a sweat.
Getting panicky about potential rivals elsewhere on this planet has by no means been Vienna’s type. The town has been all about coolly, calmly establishing itself as Nummer Eins for few centuries now.
So it’s an attention-grabbing run-in to pit Austria’s different key cultural heavyweight, Salzburg, towards the capital.
However since these two have related claims to the king of classical music, Mozart, the cultural conflict boils all the way down to The Sound of Music versus Gustav Klimt’s groundbreaking artwork, Lucien Freud’s psychoanalysis, among the most essential compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven and chamber music maestro Joseph Haydn, the world’s most further chocolate cake in Lodge Sacher’s namesake torte, and a roster of different triumphs there isn’t area to element right here. And nevertheless a lot all of us grew up watching Julie Andrews frockling in Salzburg’s surrounding mountains, is that basically what you’re after now?
Aesthetically, sure, Salzburg does sport that devastatingly attractive mountain backdrop – however in Vienna you don’t must gaze into the far distance, since lots of Europe’s grandest buildings are jostling in your consideration within the foreground. Cue the Hofburg palace complicated, from which the Habsburg dynasty as soon as managed one of many world’s mightiest empires, the place the crown jewels mesmerically twinkle and the place probably the most well-known equine ballet on the planet breathtakingly takes place on the Spanish Driving College. Cue the Schloss Belvedere palace and grounds, constructed to compete in ostentatious magnificence with Versailles. It’s all nonstop finery, radiating out from the Unesco-listed historic middle.
And that’s why I like Vienna. The style the Viennese have acquired via the course of their historical past for all times’s loveliest issues simply rubs off on you and makes you assume that’s how life must be in every single place. Besides it’s not – to not the identical impeccable requirements. Maybe because of this town secured high spot on The Economist’s International Liveability Index for 4 of the final 5 years.
What exactly makes it so livable? The whole lot. There are hundred-odd museums right here, together with quite a few world-class repositories of artwork just like the Leopold Museum – and at the very least as many different kinds of sights once more, tributes to Vienna’s glamorous lives and nice deeds previous and current. Viennese coffeehouse tradition has Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage standing, not just for the ornateness of the premises however for the pedigree of former patrons (you’re consuming the place Klimt, Freud, Trotsky as soon as did – if these partitions might speak…) and sorts of drink served with their regionally particular backstories (just like the Einspänner, a double espresso topped with foam so metropolis coachmen might hold their scorching drinks insulated within the chilly).
The town relishes its wine simply as a lot – and as one of many world’s few capitals with appellation wine grown inside it quaffs the good things in devoted Heurigen (wine taverns). It’s wealthy in social enchancment tasks, too, akin to Magdas – a resort staffed by refugees. Even its waste incineration plant in Spittelau is a shocking vacationer attraction, bedecked within the vibrant artwork of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Let’s not neglect, both, that the capital gave the world each the waltz and opera glasses.
No additional proof wanted that this metropolis embraces the nice life like nowhere else.
