Salzburg Sound of Music Audio Walking Tour (Self-Guided)

A young woman leaves a convent on a hill to look after a widowed naval captain's seven children. She teaches them to sing, she marries him, and when Nazi Germany takes over Austria, the whole family slips away from a festival stage and escapes over the mountains. That's The Sound of Music, the 1965 film directed by Robert Wise, with Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp. It was based, loosely, on a real Salzburg family, and this walk tells both stories side by side, always making clear which is which. It's an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio. We start in the middle of the film, on the children's day out. Then we step back to Maria's first walk through town, and back again to the abbey where her story began, on screen and in real life. From there we jump to the ending, step back to the festival concert and the day out, and finish where the children learn to sing. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 3.9 kilometers from the Mozartsteg footbridge to the Mirabell Gardens.

Before you set off

The walking adds up to about 54 minutes, so allow around two hours with time at each stop. Most of the route is flat old town, on cobbles and paving, but there is one real climb: the steps up to Nonnberg Abbey, and back down again. Wear comfortable shoes. Nonnberg is a working convent and St Peter's a working cemetery, so keep your voice low at both, and please don't sing at the abbey gate, however tempting it is. The abbey church at Nonnberg is usually open during the day, though it can close in the late afternoon, and the convent itself is closed to visitors. St Peter's Cemetery is open every day, with shorter hours in winter. The Felsenreitschule is a festival theater, so you can only go inside with a ticket or on a guided tour. The Mirabell Gardens are free and open from early morning, but the fountains are switched off in winter. Check hours before you go.

Mozartsteg

You're on the Mozartsteg, a slender footbridge over the Salzach River. Stand in the middle and look along the water, with the old town on one bank and the hills rising all around. The bridge opened in 1903, and it began life as a private toll bridge.

In the film, this bridge belongs to the happiest stretch of the story. Maria has come down from the abbey to the Trapp house as governess, and she has found a household run like a ship. The Captain is a stern widower who summons his children with a whistle. Maria isn't having it. She gets the seven of them out of their stiff clothes and into play clothes, and takes them out into Salzburg for a day of fun. In the montage of that day, Maria and the children cross this footbridge together. Film fans argue about which song is playing at this exact moment, and the sources honestly disagree, so we'll leave that to your own memory of the film.

Now meet the real family, because they'll walk alongside the film the whole way. The real captain was Georg von Trapp, born in 1880. In the First World War he commanded a submarine. By his family's accounts, he was nothing like the cold man with the whistle. He was warm, and he was musical. The real woman was Maria Kutschera, born in Vienna in 1905. And the children? The film changed every one of their names, and even changed some of their genders. The seven on this bridge are characters, inspired by real people, not portraits of them.

This day out is the middle of the story. Let's step back to the day Maria first walked into town, nervous and determined. Walk off the bridge onto the old-town side, cross Mozartplatz, and carry straight on into the big square beyond it, Residenzplatz. Head for the fountain. About three minutes.

Residenzplatz fountain

You're on Residenzplatz, the main square of Salzburg's old town. In the middle stands the Residenzbrunnen, a baroque fountain about 15 meters tall, with stone horses spouting water around its base. It was finished in 1661. Now look to the south side of the square, at the arches that lead through to the cathedral square, the Domplatz.

We've gone back in time a little, to before the day out. In the film, Maria has just been sent from the abbey to be governess to a stranger's seven children, and she is frightened of what she'll find. So she sings her way across the city to give herself courage. The song is "I Have Confidence." In this square she comes out through those arches, crosses toward the fountain, and, as she passes, splashes the water at the horses. Stand by the basin and you're on her path.

Here's how the real story went. The real Maria did leave the abbey for the Trapp house, in 1926. But she wasn't sent as governess to all seven children. She was sent to tutor one child: the captain's second daughter, who was also called Maria, and who was recovering from scarlet fever. A much smaller job than the film gives her.

To understand where Maria came from, let's go back further still, to the abbey on the hill. Walk back to Mozartplatz and take Kaigasse, the lane heading south-east from it. Near its far end, climb the Nonnberg steps up to the abbey. About ten minutes, and the last part is uphill.

Nonnberg Abbey

You're at Nonnberg Abbey, high above the old town. Keep your voice low here. This is a working Benedictine convent, and the nuns still live behind these walls. Look at the gate in front of you. This is the outside the whole world knows from the film.

Nonnberg is old, very old. St Rupert founded it around the year 712 to 715, and made his relative Erentrudis the first abbess. It's the oldest nunnery in the German-speaking world that has existed without a break, for some thirteen hundred years.

In the film, this is where the story begins. Maria is a postulant here who doesn't quite fit, and the nuns aren't sure what to do with her. So she's sent down the hill to the Trapp house, and she leaves through this gate. Only the outside and the gate were filmed here. The abbey didn't let the cameras inside, so the cloister scenes you see on screen were reproduced in a studio.

Here, for once, film and history meet. In 1924, the real Maria Kutschera came here as a postulant, a young woman preparing to become a nun. Two years later the abbey sent her to tutor the captain's sick daughter. In 1927 she married Georg von Trapp, right here, in this abbey church. Years later, Maria said, in effect, that she married Georg because she liked him, and because she loved the children. It's an honest, rather touching thing to admit, and very different from the film's romance.

The film moved the wedding. Its grand church wedding was shot in the basilica at Mondsee, a lake town about 30 kilometers away. And the real marriage came more than ten years before the family left Austria, not shortly before, as many people assume.

If the church is open, you can step inside quietly. Now we jump all the way to the end of the story. Go back down the Nonnberg steps and make your way west to Kapitelplatz, the wide square beside the cathedral. Remember that square: something that once stood there is waiting for you at the end of the walk. Carry on west into the grounds of St Peter's Abbey. The cemetery lies at the foot of the cliff. About ten minutes, downhill.