The Mozart House in St. Gilgen is where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born on 25 December 1720. Nannerl Mozart, his older sister, lived here for seventeen years after her marriage. It is one of the least visited genuine Mozart family sites in the region.
The Story
Most visitors who come to the Wolfgangsee come for the scenery. The Mozart connection to St. Gilgen is not widely known, which is part of what makes this house interesting.
The building at Ischler Strasse 15 was constructed between 1718 and 1720 by Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl, the local Pflegekommissarius, as both a district courthouse and a family home. It was here that his daughter Anna Maria was born on Christmas Day 1720. She would later marry Leopold Mozart in Salzburg in 1747 and become the mother of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Above the main entrance, a carved 1720 chronogram encodes the year of the building's construction in Roman numerals, alongside the Pertl family coat-of-arms, a silver lion on a blue field. The building served as St. Gilgen's district court for nearly three centuries, closing in 2002. The Mozartdorf cultural association bought it in 2005 and opened a museum on the family history.
Nannerl Mozart provides the second layer of the story. Mozart's older sister, also a prodigiously talented keyboard player who toured Europe with her brother in childhood, married Johann Baptist von Berchtold, St. Gilgen's magistrate, in 1784 at the age of 33 and moved into this house. She lived here until her husband's death in 1801, then returned to Salzburg, where she taught piano until she lost her sight in later life. The house connects both the maternal and the sibling lines of the Mozart family to this village on the Wolfgangsee.
A monument in the main square of St. Gilgen commemorates the family connection. For visitors who are making a Salzkammergut day trip and want to add biographical depth to the landscape, St. Gilgen offers something that the better-known destinations further along the lake do not.
Visiting
Ischler Strasse 15, St. Gilgen. Open seasonally, approximately Wed-Sun 13:00-18:00 (check mozarthaus.info for current hours). Admission charged. Approximately 30 minutes for a visit. St. Gilgen is 30 minutes from Salzburg by car or by bus 150 (every 30 minutes). Combine with a walk along the Wolfgangsee shore.