Mozart Residence

In 1773, the Mozart family moved from their cramped apartment on Getreidegasse to this considerably more spacious house on what was then called Hannibalplatz. The building was known as the Tanzmeisterhaus — the Dance Master's House — because since 1711, the court dancing master Johann Lorenz Spöckner had held dance lessons for Salzburg's nobility in its large rooms. For Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, now seventeen years old, the move meant more space to compose, and compose he did: symphonies, serenades, divertimenti, piano and violin concertos, masses, and the beginnings of operas poured out of these rooms between 1773 and 1780.

This was the house where Mozart lived during the years he grew from prodigy to artist — and the years he grew to hate Salzburg. His increasingly bitter relationship with the new Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, who treated him as a servant rather than a genius, culminated in 1781 when Mozart was literally kicked out of the archbishop's service (the secretary Count Arco reportedly booted him through a door). Mozart left for Vienna and never lived in Salzburg again. His father Leopold stayed in the house until his death in 1787.

Allied bombs destroyed much of the building in 1944, and it was rebuilt in 1996 and reopened as a museum by the International Mozarteum Foundation. The collection includes musical instruments, documents, and family portraits. In 2022, the museum received a remarkable addition: the Zauberflötenhäuschen, a small wooden summerhouse in which Mozart is said to have composed portions of The Magic Flute. The tiny structure was relocated here from Vienna, giving visitors the chance to stand in the space where one of opera's greatest works may have taken shape.

The house sits on Makartplatz, facing the Salzburg State Theatre and the Trinity Church. The neighbourhood is quieter than the old town across the river, which somehow feels right for a museum dedicated to a man who needed silence to create.