Trip Plan
The Sound of Music is popular everywhere except Austria. Most Austrians have never seen it. I have seen it more often than most of them, because my grandmother showed it to me every time I visited her.
The bus tours cover the palaces and the lakes, but the old town is pedestrian-only, so they skip everything in it. This walk is that missing half, and it does not overlap with any bus tour. It starts at the Do-Re-Mi steps, crosses the river, goes up the Mönchsberg once, and ends at the abbey gate where Maria leaves for the von Trapp house.
Ordered route
The sequence and every stop note are preserved exactly as authored. Hover a stop to see it on the map; click a marker for the details.
The Borghese Fencers at the Makartplatz entrance, the hedge tunnel, the Pegasus fountain and the Do-Re-Mi steps: most of the song was filmed in this one garden. Early is quieter.
Up the stairs at the end of the hedge tunnel, find the dwarf with the open mouth that Maria and the children pat on the head. Touching is allowed.
The Lonely Goatherd is a puppet show, and this is the city's puppet theatre, which now stages its own Sound of Music. During opening hours you can walk into the foyer and see the historic puppets without a ticket.
The film's Winkler Terrace, in front of the Museum of Modern Art, where the Do-Re-Mi montage cuts from the countryside to the city. Take the lift inside the mountain, or walk up for free.
Turn right out of the lift and follow the rock wall. Maria and the children ride past this pool in a carriage; the archbishop's horses were washed here before they went into the riding school.
The concert at the end of the film, Edelweiss and So Long, Farewell, happens in this old riding school. The real family sang at the Salzburg Festival too, and that is what got them invited to America.
Climb the stairs on the right wall: Maria sings I Have Confidence at the top, with three churches behind her that are nowhere near each other. Down in the courtyard, Rolf hands Liesl the telegram from Berlin.
The cemetery where the family hides was built in Hollywood, but this is the one it copied. Franz Wasner, the priest who became Max in the film, is buried here, and so is Mozart's sister Nannerl.
Maria crosses Kapitelplatz past this fountain in I Have Confidence. Like the pool by the Festival House, it was built for watering horses.
Maria comes out through the cathedral arches here, and the children run across the square in their picnic clothes. For me this square is the centre of Salzburg; every event in the city happens on it.
Maria splashes the fountain in I Have Confidence. Later in the film Nazi soldiers march across the same square, with a swastika hanging from the Residenz.
Maria and the children cross the river here at the end of My Favorite Things, then skip along the bank. A café owner from the right bank paid for the bridge, and until 1921 you paid a toll to cross it.
The market where Maria juggles tomatoes. Come on a Friday morning, when the farmers' market is back on the square.
Maria and the children pass this church in a carriage along Nonntaler Hauptstraße. The street is where the locals eat, so it is a good place to stop before the last climb.
Take the stairs on your right up to the gate, where four scenes were filmed, Maria leaving for the von Trapp house among them. The real Maria was a postulant here and married Georg von Trapp in 1927, a decade before the Nazis came.
Editorial connections
The two palaces that play the von Trapp house, the gazebo from Sixteen Going on Seventeen, and the mountain behind the opening scene, all south of the old town. Bus 25 connects the four. A bike is more fun, and the first three are part of my daily walk.
The lakes from the opening flight, the church where Maria marries the Captain, and the Do-Re-Mi picnic meadow. Two days out of Salzburg: three stops east in the lake district, easiest by car, and two south in Werfen, forty minutes by train.
Ready when you are
Every stop above links to its full guide, so the route works without me. If you would rather have the stories told out loud, the daily free walking tour covers the heart of it.
