Café Bazar is Salzburg's great literary café: opened in 1930 on Schwarzstraße, it became the preferred meeting point for the Salzburg Festival world and still holds that role today. The terrace faces directly across the Salzach River to the Altstadt skyline and Hohensalzburg Fortress.
The Story
There are cafés in Salzburg and there is Café Bazar. Opened in 1930 at the edge of the right bank, it arrived just as the Salzburg Festival was establishing its identity as one of Europe's great cultural gatherings. Max Reinhardt, the Austrian director who co-founded the Festival, made it his regular table. Stefan Zweig, living in Salzburg through the 1920s and early 1930s, was another. The pattern was set: Bazar became the room where the Festival world paused between rehearsals, between performances, between arguments about art.
The interior has not chased modernity. High ceilings, dark wood panelling, rows of newspaper holders on the wall, waiters in black and white: the room reads as a place that has been exactly this for nearly a century. The pace is unhurried in a way that most modern hospitality cannot replicate without performing it.
The terrace is the other argument for coming. It runs along Schwarzstraße facing the river, and the view across the Salzach River to the Altstadt skyline and Hohensalzburg Fortress above it is one of the better views in the city that you can sit down in front of and hold for an hour.
During the Salzburg Festival in July and August the café extends its hours to 11:30pm daily, serving the audience spilling out of the Grosses Festspielhaus and the Felsenreitschule looking for somewhere to land after the curtain falls.
Visiting
Located at Schwarzstraße 3, on the right bank of the Salzach River, a 3-minute walk from the Staatsbrucke bridge. Regular hours: Monday to Saturday 7:30am-7:30pm, Sunday and holidays 9am-6pm. Festival season (July-August): daily 7:30am-11:30pm. No reservations accepted. Coffee and cake run EUR 8-15 per person. The terrace seats facing the river and fortress are the ones to aim for. Combine with Mirabell Gardens and Linzer Gasse on the same side of the river.