Salome Alt

Snapshot

The woman Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau built a palace for. Daughter of a Salzburg merchant. His companion for nearly two decades. Together they had 15 children. When he fell, she lost everything. The palace he named after her was renamed to erase her.

The Story

Salome Alt came from merchant money. Her father Wilhelm was a textile trader and city councillor; her grandfather had been Salzburg’s mayor. She met Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau around 1593 and became his companion in a relationship that was open, deliberate, and completely at odds with the expectations of his office.

Wolf Dietrich could not marry her without resigning his archbishopric. He chose not to. But he did not hide the relationship either. He ennobled her as Salome Alt von Altenau, petitioned Rome for legitimacy for their children, and in 1609 Emperor Rudolf II formally legitimised all fifteen. The following year she held assets worth over 400,000 guilders. In 1606 Wolf Dietrich built Altenau Palace for her, a private retreat just outside the old city walls, named after her noble title.

When the Bavarian Duke Maximilian captured Wolf Dietrich in 1611 and imprisoned him in Hohensalzburg Fortress, the arrangement collapsed immediately. His successor Mark Sittich von Hohenems took over and renamed the palace Mirabell. Salome’s name disappeared from the building. She was exiled from Salzburg and spent her final years away. Wolf Dietrich died in captivity in 1617. Salome outlived him by sixteen years, dying in Wels in Upper Austria in 1633.

Mirabell Palace today is visited by hundreds of thousands of people annually, almost none of whom know her name. A street in Salzburg, Altgasse, was named after her family in 1935.