Salzburg

Work began in 1077 and no army ever took the place. A steep rail car lifts visitors in 1 minute, while the footpath takes about 15.

An archbishop built the palace for the woman he loved, and its beds are clipped into geometric figures. The staircase and the dwarf statues appeared in a film, which is why crowds gather.

Back when few could read, shops announced themselves with wrought iron signs. Even global brands hang the same kind of sign on this lane today.

Mozart was born in 1756 on the third floor of the yellow building. The small violin from his childhood and his letters are set out one room after another.

The bronze basin where Mozart was baptised still stands to the right of the entrance. Five pipe organs sit under the dome, so a recital arrives from every direction.

Fountains built to catch guests off guard hide in the dining chairs and under the paths. A guide turns a handle, water shoots up without warning and clothes get wet.

Early Christian chapels cut into the cliff sit above the burial ground. Each grave carries an iron lattice, and together they read like a thicket.

The hill across the river is climbed by 250 steps that follow the stations of the cross. From the lookout at the top, the fortress and the old centre land in one frame.

A footbridge crosses the river with padlocks packed along its rail. Seen from the deck, the water runs a cloudy pale green from the lime it carries.

The cabin reaches a summit at 1853 metres in 8 minutes. From the top the German border lies underfoot, and on a cloudless day the alpine ridges line up.

The family moved from the birthplace in 1773 to this house on Makartplatz, over the river. Wartime bombs left it half in ruins in 1944 before it was rebuilt. A keyboard the family played stands inside, and it draws fewer people than the birthplace.

A single ticket route tying together the archbishops' palace, the cathedral and St Peter's Abbey. It runs along the cathedral organ loft, high over the pews. Before the route opened in 2014 the public never walked these corridors.

A convent founded around 714, the oldest in the German-speaking world never to have broken its line. Maria von Trapp lived here as a novice. Halfway down the fortress hill, it is worth a pause while descending.

An archbishop put up this rococo palace by a pond in 1736; Max Reinhardt, co-founder of the Salzburg Festival, later owned it. Now a hotel, it admits guests only. From the path across the pond, palace and fortress lie mirrored in the water.

A lift bored through the cliff behind the old town rises 60 metres to the hilltop. The modern art museum stands at the exit, and its terrace looks over the old roofs and domes below. Skip the galleries if you like; a wooded ridge path goes on to the fortress.

A glass-and-steel hangar beside the airport where Red Bull parks its vintage aircraft and racing cars. Entry costs nothing. Visitors walk right up under the wings, and the hangar runs its own bar and restaurant too.

A salt mine inside the Durrnberg south of Salzburg, entered in miners' overalls. Wooden slides drop visitors between galleries, and the route slips over the German border underground. A raft crosses a brine lake, and it is chilly down there even at midsummer.

A theatre staging opera with string puppets since 1913. The Magic Flute is the signature show, each figure worked by many strings. The stage is small, so the front rows catch even the puppets' finger movements.

A festival stage set against a quarry wall cut into the Monchsberg rock, three rows of arched galleries carved one above another. It started as the archbishops' riding school. Outside the July and August festival, a guided tour leads onto the stage.

Inside the mountain at Werfen runs a limestone cave over 40 kilometres long, its first kilometre sheathed in ice. No electric light: guides carry carbide lamps to the ice walls. Expect about 700 steps and sub-zero air, so pack a warm layer even in midsummer.

Werfen village lies beneath this medieval castle on its crag, and most visitors pair it with the ice cave on one day. In its courtyard falconers fly hawks and eagles in a birds-of-prey show. The birds skim low, right over the spectators' heads.