A small walled garden within the Mirabell grounds, displaying the surviving marble dwarf figures carved around 1690. 28 originally, 17 today. Tucked behind the main garden. Easy to miss, worth finding.
The Story
The Mirabell Gardens are one of the most visited spots in Salzburg. Most of the visitors who come to photograph the formal parterres, the roses, and the fountain never find the Zwerglgarten, which sits behind a wall in a corner of the grounds and has no prominent sign pointing toward it.
Twenty-eight figures in marble originally, each one different, carved around 1690 by several artists with Ottavio Mosto and Bernhard Michael Mandl in the leading roles. Seventeen survive today. They first stood at the site that is now the Magic Flute playground and were later gathered into this walled corner. They represent a range of types: commedia dell'arte characters with their fixed masks and gesturing hands, court jesters in motley, exotic figures in the costumes that baroque Europe associated with the Ottoman world and the Far East, and a number of figures whose faces are too particular, too specific in their features and expressions, to be generic types. These are likely portrait likenesses of the actual court dwarves who lived at the Archbishop's court.
That specificity is what gives the garden its particular quality. The figures are not decorative grotesques in the standard baroque sense. They have faces you might remember. Some gesticulate. Some grimace. Some simply stare. There is nothing quite like the Zwerglgarten in Austrian garden art.
Visiting
- Hours: Open dawn to dusk (follows Mirabell Gardens hours)
- Cost: Free
- Getting there: Enter the Mirabell Gardens from Mirabellplatz and look for the walled garden section behind the main parterre
- Time needed: 30-60 minutes
- Combine with: Mirabell Gardens, Mirabell Palace