Many thousands of years ago, the land on which Salzburg sits was a giant lake filled with salt water. As the water evaporated, ancient people began to mine salt here, which was essential to food preservation. Later still, the Celts came, then the Romans, the Hungarians and the Germans, who founded the monastery of St Peter in 696 AD.
The mining of salt and then copper made Salzburg a wealthy town, which attracted not only business-people, but powerful rulers and religious leaders. Together, they funded many impressive churches, which were built, destroyed, re-built, burned, re-built and added onto over centuries.
We started our Salzburg church tour with St Peter’s, which dates back to the 900s, then was enlarged and decorated throughout the 1700s. It was very ornate.
It contained the tomb of St Rupert and a monument to composer Michael Hayden. The urn above apparently contains the remains of his skull.
The next church we saw was the Church of St Blasius, which was much smaller and plainer — what John deemed a “people’s church.” It was built in the 1300s adjacent to a hospital, and named for Blaise, a physician saint originally from Turkey.
After that we went to the University of Salzburg church, which was nearly all white and a testament to human achievement. It was light and airy and cherubs surrounded the clouds and windows.
This church had no pulpits, so you could really appreciate the central floor design.
The Franciscan church was first built in 1200, but expanded numerous times, so it displays a wide variety of architecture. It also contains a number of relics, including what appears to he a crowned skull (below). Not sure who he is, but apparently, he defied the injunction that “you can’t take it with you.”
This photo shows the ceiling of the Dom, which is the Salzburg cathedral and the last church we went into yesterday. It was founded in 767 by an Irish Bishop, then consecrated again in the 1600s after it was rebuilt in late Renaissance and Baroque style. For that reason, it feels very Italian. The dome was destroyed by US Air Force bombing during WWII, but was rebuilt in the 1950s.
The cathedral includes some awesome crypts in the basement with fascinating light displays worthy of Halloween.
As part of our church tour, we listed to an organ concert in the Dom, which has 7 pipe organs, with 120 registers and over ten thousand pipes.
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