Hotel Weiße Taube

The Altstadthotel Weisse Taube is a small four-star hotel in Salzburg’s old town, on Kaigasse 9. The building is a medieval listed town house that once served as a tailor’s guildhall and hostel for journeymen. Joseph Mohr, who wrote the words to ‘Silent Night’, was born here in 1792. The house has been a hotel since 1904 and belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage historic centre. It also lies within the city’s old-town conservation zone. The house first appears in records in 1365 opposite the Domherrnspital. The Salzburg provost Peter von Dorenperch owned it, and later owners included an archbishop’s cook and a goldsmith. In 1491 the tailors’ guild bought the building and ran a hostel for travelling craftsmen for more than four centuries. After the end of the prince-archbishopric in 1809 the building passed through several innkeepers before being renamed Weisse Taube in 1904. Today the hotel occupies five floors behind a broad, slightly angled façade that follows the medieval riverside quay. The entrance leads to a staircase hall that still shows medieval stonework. Behind the house a modern extension links the Kaigasse block to the Pfeiffergasse courtyard. The rooms combine historic elements with simple baroque-style detailing, and the hotel remains a family-run business in its fifth generation.