Petersfriedhof

St Peter’s Cemetery lies at the foot of the Festungsberg beneath Hohensalzburg Castle in Salzburg. Founded around the year 700 with the nearby St Peter’s Abbey, it is one of the city’s oldest burial grounds and remains a popular place to walk among the graves. The abbey’s cemetery was first recorded in 1139, and the oldest surviving tombstone dates from 1288. After burials were halted in 1878 the site fell into neglect until the monks of St Peter’s successfully campaigned for its reopening in 1930. The cemetery shares its long history with Nonnberg Abbey’s burial ground, both standing as Salzburg’s earliest resting places. Notable figures rest here in quiet rows of headstones and family vaults. Composers Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Michael Haydn lie side by side, while Maria Anna Mozart, Wolfgang’s elder sister, is buried here as Nannerl. The cemetery also holds Salzburg mayors such as Sigmund Haffner and Heinrich Ritter von Mertens, along with architects Santino Solari and Clemens Holzmeister. Librettist Ignatz Anton von Weiser, who wrote texts for Mozart, is buried here, as is the conductor Bernhard Paumgartner. Recent burials include sculptor Anna Chromy in 2021. Paths wind between ancient lime and cypress trees past the Margarethenkapelle, rebuilt in 1491 at the cemetery’s centre. Carved into the rock behind are the catacombs, linked to Severinus of Noricum and containing the Maximuskapelle and Gertraudenkapelle consecrated in 1178. The chapels recall Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach and the murdered Thomas Becket of Canterbury. Visitors find shaded avenues of graves, weathered Baroque crosses and simple stone slabs, with views up to the castle above. The air carries the scent of old stone and clipped box hedges, while the distant ring of the abbey bells marks the hours.