Mirabell Palace and Gardens in Salzburg

What’s more appropriate to do in Salzburg than visit the special locations it’s famous for? Aside from being the birthplace of music genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Salzburg became known for the film musical The Sound of Music which brought us the songs “Edelweiss“, “My Favorite Things”, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”, “Do-Re-Mi”, “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”, and “The Lonely Goatherd.”

Salzburg tourism capitalizes on this fact and many tours were arranged for visitors to exclusively see the locations that were highlighted in the movie. Such tours start by the Mirabell Palace which explains why there are buses parked outside. The Mirabell Palace and Gardens was one of the area where Maria and the kids were seen singing a handful times.

We opted to go impromptu, walking as we please. Since we arrived a little later than expected (travel from Vienna took almost 3 hours),  we immediately started exploring not minding the tour offers.

Garden

From the entrance, one can already get a feel of how impressive the geometrically-arranged Mirabell garden would be.

Passing through a small landscaped garden, one would be welcomed into a bigger lawn. Flower beds carefully laid out, walls covered with vines, benches here and there, Roman statues and stone flower vases lined up, fountain features and an arbor to walk through when the scorching sun is up – enchanted the photobug in me. The fortress can be seen from the garden (see below photo).

The wisteria falls down the landscape so picturesquely, I would suggest to visit in spring. But, any season in Salzburg is also beautiful.

There is also a playground far hidden from tourist views where kids could spend some time in.

Palace

The palace is comparably small to other palaces and castles we’ve been to. Perhaps, that was just an impression since we never got in to explore. :/ (I truly blame us having arrived so late.) But, as most palaces in Austria, the Mirabell is of Baroque style.

The Marble Hall (topmost photo) of the Palace is the venue of the “Salzburg Palace Concerts” and is also a popular  wedding venue.

Mirabell Palace and Gardens Museum

We were able to visit the the Salzburg Baroque museum which was at the southern wing of the orangerie. It was relatively small, 2 storeys but they have awesome sketches that the kids and I were able to view hurriedly.

Taking photos was prohibited  so I just took photos from inside – of the view outside the window. The museum holds drawings and paintings by Rubens, Bernini and Algardi. There are also Cortona, the local hero Rottmayr, Altomonte, Tiepolo, the Guardis, and Maulbertsch among others.

Art enthusiasts would be happy going about and savor each on display, as mentioned the museum is “small,” so you have enough time to gawk around.

If you’ve watched the Sound of Music, you’re definitely familiar with the scenes here, if not, go ahead and squeeze watching it into your schedule… It’s never too late to watch a classic Julie Andrews film, you’ll probably find yourself singing to one of its catchy tunes.