Palace
Also known as Leopoldskron Palace
The Baroque facade of Schloss Leopoldskron reflected in the Leopoldskroner Weiher is one of the iconic images of Salzburg. It is also, technically, the Von Trapp villa from The Sound of Music, which makes it both more and less than it appears.
Archbishop Leopold Anton von Firmian ordered the palace built in 1736, partly with assets seized from the 20,000 Protestant Salzburgers he had expelled a few years earlier. The Rococo interiors, including the Marble Hall, were among the finest in the region. When Firmian died in 1744, the palace passed to his nephew and then through various hands until it fell into disrepair.
Max Reinhardt bought it in 1918, on the day the armistice was signed, for a sum that reflected Austria’s economic collapse. Reinhardt was the most influential theatre director of his generation. He restored the palace over two decades and made it his creative headquarters. In the summers that followed his purchase, he gathered here with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss to plan a festival that would revive Mozart’s legacy in the city where Mozart was born. The first Salzburg Festival performance, Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann, was staged at Domplatz in August 1920.
The Nazis confiscated the palace in April 1938, two days after the Anschluss. Reinhardt had already fled. The palace housed SS officers and served as a reception point. After the war it was returned to the Reinhardt family and later became the home of the Salzburg Global Seminar, a reconciliation project founded in 1947, which has owned and operated it ever since.
The Sound of Music connection is real but needs clarification. The rear facade and lake terrace were used for exterior shots of the fictional Von Trapp villa. The interior ballroom scenes were filmed on a Hollywood replica. The Trapp family’s actual home is Villa Trapp in Aigen, a considerably more modest building about four kilometres away. This distinction matters if you are trying to understand which story belongs where.
Do it here
These experiences include this place in their authored route.
The iconic coach tour of Salzburg and Salzkammergut filming locations from the 1965 film. ~4 hours. Mirabell Gardens (Do-Re-Mi staircase), Schloss Leopoldskron, Nonnberg Abbey, Mondsee church. One of the most popular tourist activities in Salzburg. For many first-time visitors, the primary reason they chose Salzburg.
People
actor1929 - 2021
Played Captain Georg von Trapp opposite Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965). Famously disliked the film, reportedly calling it "The Sound of Mucus." Won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Beginners (2011) at 82, the oldest competitive Oscar winner in history.
actorb. 1935
The actress whose performance in The Sound of Music (1965) is responsible, more than any other single event, for Salzburg's status as one of the world's most visited tourist destinations. Her opening sequence on the Untersberg meadow, arms outstretched, is one of the most recognised images in cinema.
educator1905 - 1987
The real Maria. A novice at Nonnberg Abbey before marrying widowed naval officer Georg von Trapp, Maria became world famous through the 1959 musical The Sound of Music and the 1965 film. Her life and the filming locations in and around Salzburg draw millions of tourists to the city each year.
director1873 - 1943
Theatre director of extraordinary vision and co-founder of the Salzburg Festival. Reinhardt purchased Schloss Leopoldskron in 1918, which later inspired the Von Trapp villa in The Sound of Music. He staged the first Jedermann on Domplatz in 1920. Jewish, he fled the Nazis in 1938 and died in New York exile in 1943.
director1914 - 2005
Director of The Sound of Music (1965), which won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. His decision to shoot on location rather than in a studio made Salzburg itself a character in the film, with consequences for the city's tourism identity that persist six decades later.
