Salzburg Festival Halls
Three linked opera and concert halls cut into the Mönchsberg, home of the Salzburg Festival since 1960.
The Salzburg Festival district occupies the site of the prince-archbishops' court stables at the foot of the Mönchsberg. Its largest auditorium, the Grosses Festspielhaus, was built to designs by Clemens Holzmeister between 1956 and 1960, work that required some 55,000 cubic metres of rock to be blasted out of the hillside. It opened on 26 July 1960 with Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier under Herbert von Karajan, who had advised closely on the shape of the hall.
The auditorium seats about 2,179 people in a nearly square room roughly 35 metres across, behind one of the widest stages in Europe and an iron safety curtain weighing some 34 tonnes. Next door stand the Felsenreitschule, an arcaded former riding school quarried into the rock face, and the Haus für Mozart, rebuilt in 2006 on the site of the original festival theatre. Together the three halls carry the opera and concert programmes of the Salzburg Festival.
Highlights
- Grosses Festspielhaus of about 2,179 seats, opened in 1960
- Felsenreitschule, a former riding school quarried into the Mönchsberg
- Haus für Mozart, rebuilt in 2006 beside the older halls
- Guided tours of roughly 50 minutes in German and English
