Salzburg

Salzburg lies on the Salzach where the river leaves the Alps, in the ruins of the Roman town of Iuvavum. Bishop Rupert settled here around 700 and the see became an archbishopric in 798. The name comes from the salt barges on the river, and the salt came from Hallein and the Dürrnberg upstream, whose mines made the archbishops rich. Above the cathedral quarter rises Hohensalzburg, begun in 1077 and enlarged by later archbishops. By the late fourteenth century the archbishops had made themselves independent of the Bavarian dukes, and they ruled Salzburg as princes of the Empire until 1803.

In 1525, during the Peasants' War, the rebels held the town and besieged the archbishop in his fortress for three months. Under Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, who ruled from 1587, the Romanesque cathedral was pulled down; its Baroque successor was consecrated in 1628, and Italian architects remade much of the old town. The university was founded in 1622. In 1731 the archbishop ordered the Protestants to recant or leave, and over twenty thousand went, most of them to East Prussia. Mozart, born in the town, served the archbishop and left for Vienna in 1781. After secularisation in 1803, Salzburg passed between Austria and Bavaria, and in 1816 it went back to Austria.