Hotel Stein has stood on Giselakai since 1399, but its rooftop bar, named Falstaff's Rooftop Bar of the Year 2024, is the reason the city talks about it today. The Steinterrasse sweeps over the Salzach, the fortress, the Altstadt roofline, and the Mönchsberg in a single unobstructed view. It is open to non-guests from 5pm.
The Story
The site first appears in records from 1399, a modest inn at the edge of the medieval city where the stone houses met the river. It held travellers for six centuries in various forms before a 1956 rebuild gave it the exterior it still wears today, a postwar shell that preserved the older bones underneath without advertising them.
Haythem Al Wazzan bought the property in 2001 and spent the next fifteen years planning what to do with it. The renovation that followed, running from 2016 and reopening in 2017, was guided by a specific aesthetic idea: Salzburg meets Venice. The 16th-century city plan was partly the work of Venetian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, and the hotel's owners leaned into that connection. Murano glass from Barovier and Toso hangs above the lounge. Rubelli velvet covers the sofas. Luigi Caputo's large-format photographs place Salzburg rooftops beside Venetian canals. The blue palette runs through corridors, rooms, and the stairwell glass panels, referencing the lagoon sky rather than the Alpine grey that dominates most Salzburg interiors.
Architects Michael Strobl and Christian Prasser designed the renovation to respect the street scale, matching the building height to surrounding historic facades and inserting a glass-wrapped lounge where a street gap existed, keeping it feeling like a natural extension rather than a museum piece. The rooftop, however, is the centrepiece. The Steinterrasse sits on the seventh floor and delivers an unobstructed view over Hohensalzburg, the Salzach River, Mönchsberg, and the Altstadt roofline in a single sweep. Falstaff named it Austria's Rooftop Bar of the Year in 2024.
The hotel is adults-only, 56 rooms, each with a 1950s-modern design vocabulary, an espresso machine, and Saint Charles natural cosmetics. Rotating art installations by artists including Brigitte Kowanz keep the public spaces in dialogue with the contemporary art scene. An in-house concept store sells carefully selected provisions.
Visiting
Giselakai 3-5, directly on the riverbank at the Altstadt edge; Linzergasse is 70 metres away, Mozart's Birthplace five minutes across the bridge. The hotel is adults-only. The Steinterrasse rooftop bar opens at 5pm and is open to non-guests; it is worth visiting for the view alone. Spa access with sauna and two treatment rooms is available for guests. Rates from around EUR 180 per night for a standard room, with late checkout available at EUR 15 surcharge.