Highlights of the Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau and Salzburg"s "Italianità" tour:
Altenau Palace (today known as Mirabell Palace) and Mirabell Gardens including the Susanna Fountain by Hans Waldburger.
Designed as a villa suburbana, Altenau Palace was Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau"s "built declaration of love" to his life companion Salome Alt. He introduced the southern tradition of the generously appointed Renaissance garden to Salzburg. Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau possibly commissioned Hans Waldburger in 1610 to construct the mysterious "Susanna Fountain" in today"s Mirabell Gardens.
Following the fall of Wolf Dietrich, the castle was given a new name by his successor Markus Sittikus von Hohenems. From then on, it would be called Mirabell Palace in order to downplay the memory of his predecessor. Paris Lodron loved Mirabell Palace and had it upgraded further. Johann Ernst Graf von Thun commissioned famed architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach to expand and lavishly decorate the garden. The reign of Franz Anton von Harrach brought further expansion. He commissioned renowned court architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt with remodelling the building into a grand representative Baroque palace, including the ceremonial staircase and Marble Hall.
The magnificent staircase, a masterpiece of scalalogy, is the heart of the palace complex. The ornamental curved balustrade is adorned with famed putti figures. Like the Roman deities in the niches, they are the product of Georg Raphael Donner"s workshop.
The Baroque era loved the delightful interplay between opposites. In the Baroque Mirabell Garden, 28 larger-than-life, idealised Roman deities meet 28 misshapen, smaller than life-size dwarves. The Baroque vanitas motif is also omnipresent in this place.
St. Sebastian"s Cemetery and Gabriel"s Chapel
Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau commissioned Andrea Bertoletto to build St. Sebastian"s Cemetery as a replacement for the cathedral cemetery. This romantic long-standing cemetery is a particular gem in the city"s history. This impressive campo santo features magnificent arcades and picturesque weather-beaten tombs. It is a place where time seems to stand still. Wolf Dietrich"s mausoleum, Gabriel"s Chapel, is a masterpiece by Elia Castello, and creates an impressive central focal point for the cemetery. The structure"s unusual circular shape is reminiscent of the tomb of Theoderic the Great in Ravenna. Its modest exterior follows the architectural design language of the Renaissance and contrasts against the sumptuous interior decor. Here, Moorish and Mannerist stylistic features appear side-by-side, to impressive effect.
The bright colours of the glazed tiles lend the chapel a cheerful, oriental feel. The larger-than-life statues of the four evangelists pose with "Mannerist nonchalance" in their alcoves. They are accompanied by enchanting richly decorated and gold heightened fishtail caryatids.
On the tour, you will learn – among other things – why Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau also had his coat of arms "improved" and why he chose the symbol of a tower as his personal emblem.
A number of well-known Salzburg families had their tombs richly decorated in these lavish arcades. Paracelsus was also laid to rest in this place.
Over the centuries, the marble floor tiles have been polished smooth by the soles of shoes. This is, alongside the numerous vanitas symbols among the burial objects, a striking reference to memento mori and the transience of earthly life at this special place.
The cemetery also houses the so-called "Mozart grave" and the communal crypt where Leopold Mozart was buried.
In 2014, urn burials become permissible once again in the campo santo.
The Baroque centre of the city of Salzburg – UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997
The tour takes us across the Staatsbrücke and into the historic centre of the city of Salzburg. The abundance and lavish decoration of the city"s expansive plazas, featuring both sacred and secular buildings in the representative Baroque style, are an unending source of wonder. Salzburg"s genesis from medieval city into a magnificent centre of Baroque, north of the Alps – following the great model of the eternal city of Rome – is a truly thrilling tale. The city features a number of striking remnants from the time of Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau and his successors that have been preserved to this day. Despite this, many of these hidden treasures are not immediately apparent to the untrained eye and are simply waiting to be discovered and observed.
Salzburg Cathedral
This Gesamtkunstwerk of the early Baroque period, with its imposing façade made of “Untersberg trout marble", never fails to impress visitors. The façade was sculpted in accordance with the specifications of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and illustrates the teachings and themes of the Catholic Church as a kind of "constructed profession of faith".
The representation of these ideas is continued inside the building in the stucco paintings (Quadri riportati) by Arsenio Mascagni.
In the spirit of a "via sacra", the faithful visitor is led to the high point at the main altar, which bears the latin inscription "You have made known to me the ways of life".
The story of the construction of this early Baroque building by Santino Solari is absolutely fascinating: its consecration in 1628, under Paris Lodron, was celebrated with a lavish and sensuous eight-day Baroque feast during the Thirty Years" War. A veritable "who"s who" of the high clergy and European dynasties were hosted here during the chaos of the war.
Hofstallgasse and the Festival District
It was Wolf Dietrich who, as early as 1607, initiated the illustrious function of this area with the construction of the Hofmarstall (court stables). He did not want stables in his residence and therefore arranged for the Prince-Archbishop"s ceremonial stables to be built in the area of the Frauengarten.
Noble horses had always formed part of the Princes" representation and needed to be trained and cared for accordingly.
The Salzburg horse pond, along with the marble feed troughs, are to this day an impressive testament to the grandeur of this stable building (today the Großes Festspielhaus). The Hofstallgasse had already been paved by this time and became a via principalis (Paumgartner 1966) in the Roman sense.
The stretch of road that runs along Herbert von Karajanplatz, Hofstallgasse, Max Reinhard-Platz and Franziskanergasse to the Domplatz was redesigned in accordance with a plan by Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau in around 1604 on the basis of advice from Vincenzo Scamozzi, the well-known student of Andrea Palladio. In his treatise "L"idea dell"architettura universale", Scamozzi set out the ideal floor plan for Salzburg"s new cathedral building, to include five front-facing arched gateways (1606). Previously, this area housed the Frauengarten of St. Peter"s Abbey, which was used for growing fruit and vegetables and for grazing cattle.
Today, the Festival District is characterised by its impressive buildings and lavish artistic decoration. During the festival season, the district showcases music and arts from across the world. Salzburg University, founded by Paris Lodron in 1622, also had its beginnings here and will celebrate its 400th anniversary in 2022.
In this way, Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau"s vision to turn this stretch into a processional route for Salzburg – starting as a via principalis and becoming a via sacra that ends at the Domplatz and that finds its iconographic and religious culmination at the cathedral"s high altarpiece – has been fulfilled.
“You have made known to me the ways of life”, Psalm 15