The main street of Salzburg's right bank runs along a Roman road, ends at a cemetery that contains Paracelsus, and is still more likely to have a bakery than a souvenir shop. It is the Neustadt in miniature.
The Story
Linzer Gasse follows a road that the Romans laid to connect their settlement at Juvavum (Salzburg) with the crossing at the Salzach and the routes north. The street's name is its destination: the road toward Linz, Vienna, and the Habsburg lands. That alignment has barely shifted in two thousand years.
At the southern end, the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Church of the Holy Trinity) marks the street's beginning at the Staatsbrücke. Completed in 1702, it is one of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach's most considered Salzburg works: a Baroque facade with a concave centre and two flanking towers. Fischer von Erlach was the architect who defined Austria's imperial Baroque style, and the church is his contribution to the right bank's entry point.
The street runs north along the base of the Kapuzinerberg, the forested hill that forms the eastern boundary of the Neustadt. The stairway to the Stations of the Cross path starts mid-street. At the far end, Sebastiansfriedhof (St. Sebastian's Cemetery) was laid out from 1595 to 1600 under Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, who wanted an Italian-style campo santo: an open burial garden surrounded by arcaded galleries rather than a closed churchyard. The arches are decorated with skulls, hourglasses, and serpents, the standard vocabulary of memento mori. Paracelsus, the Swiss-German physician whose work on chemical medicine made him one of the more interesting figures of the 16th century, is buried here. Leopold Mozart's wife Anna Maria and his daughter Nannerl are also buried here.
The 1818 fire destroyed much of the right bank. Most of what you see on Linzer Gasse today is post-fire Baroque and Biedermeier reconstruction. A few older house interiors survive. The Linzertor gate came down in 1894. The street has retained a more functional, local character than the parallel lanes of the Altstadt: a pharmacy at one end, a decent bakery somewhere in the middle, tourist shops mixed in without total domination.
Visiting
Always accessible, free. 15-30 minutes to walk the full length; allow extra time for the cemetery at No. 41b (open 9am to 6:30pm in summer, shorter in winter). Starts at the right-bank end of the Staatsbrücke. Combine with Dreifaltigkeitskirche at the south end, Sebastiansfriedhof at the north, and the Kapuzinerberg stairway for the walk above.