Salzburg

A city built over two centuries by its prince-archbishops. The route hangs from Hohensalzburg and fans out below it: cathedral, Residenz and St Peter's Abbey in the old town, a World Heritage site since 1996, Mirabell across the Salzach, Hellbrunn, Kleßheim and Anif outside the city, plus the three town hills.

Hohensalzburg was never taken: peasants besieged it for two months in 1525 and failed, and in 1800 it was handed to the French without a fight. Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, who had the ruined cathedral and 55 townhouses pulled down after the fire of 1598 to redraw the city, died in 1617 as a prisoner in it. Leopold Anton von Firmian, who commissioned Leopoldskron from 1736, had expelled more than 20,000 Protestants in 1731; over a fifth did not survive the journey.

Leopoldskron is sold as a Sound of Music location, but only filming on its home farm is documented; the lake terrace was rebuilt in a studio. Hellbrunn's water games have run since 1615 with no pump at all, on the fall of a stream. Mozart was baptised in the cathedral on 28 January 1756 at a font of 1321; the building lost its dome to a bomb on 16 October 1944 and was whole again only in 1959. The Festival opened on 22 August 1920 with Jedermann on the cathedral square.