The popular version of Mozart’s story ends with a genius dying poor, poisoned by a rival and thrown into a pauper’s grave. This walk tests that version against the best witness there is, his own letters. It starts where he broke with the Archbishop of Salzburg in 1781 and follows him through the old town: the cathedral where he married a day before his father’s consent arrived, the only one of his apartments that survives, the room where he started out as a free musician, the house where the emperor gave him a post, the square where he wrote his begging letters, the site of the theater where three of his operas opened, and the street where he died. It ends at his monument, with the answer to the question he set himself in 1781. No tickets needed; an optional museum visit at Domgasse 5. The optional deep dives add about 7 minutes.
The stops
- The House of the Teutonic Order: Three Words in May
- St. Stephen’s: One Day Too Early
- Domgasse 5: The Father Comes to Visit
- Milchgasse 1: Haven’t I Enough to Do?
- Tuchlauben 27: The Emperor’s Musician
- Judenplatz: The Letters to Puchberg
- Michaelerplatz: Three First Nights
- Rauhensteingasse 8: The Last Year
- The Burggarten: Honor, Fame and Money
Finding the start
Start on the Singerstraße opposite No. 7, the stone portal of the House of the Teutonic Order, about 200 meters from the Stephansplatz underground station (U1, U3): walk past the south side of the cathedral into the Singerstraße; No. 7 is on the left, beside the church of the Teutonic Order.
Terrain and access
Level and step-free, about three and a half kilometers through the old town, mostly pedestrian zones on paving, with cobbles in the Domgasse and on the Judenplatz and gravel and asphalt paths in the Burggarten. Streets with traffic at the start (Singerstraße), in the Schulerstraße, on the Michaelerplatz (horse carriages), at the Neuer Markt and the Albertinaplatz. The Burggarten is locked at night (seasonal hours); the walk can then end on the Albertinaplatz. No admissions needed; the Mozarthaus museum at Domgasse 5 is optional and ticketed.
Tickets
No admissions needed; the Mozarthaus museum at Domgasse 5 is optional and ticketed.
Keep going
- Inside the Ring: One Square Mile That Ran an Empire
- Salzburg Essentials: Princes, Salt and the Musician Who Left
What you get
- An email from [email protected] with a link and an access code.
- Use it on your phone or tablet in an up-to-date web browser, no app store needed. There is no account to set up before you start.
- Download it on Wi-Fi before you go. After that it works offline: audio, text, map and pictures.
- Your booking includes 2 phones, so two of you can follow along, each on your own. Extra phones are $2.95 each, or a group can share one phone on its speaker.
- Play, pause and replay every part, skip back and ahead, or change the playback speed. Keep the screen on or tap play at each stop.
How it was made
Every fact in the narration is checked against a cited source, and legends are told as legends. The narration is written from that research. How our tours are made.
Image credits
- Photo: Radler59 (talk), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
- Photo: C.Stadler/Bwag, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
- Photo: Zyance, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
- Photo: CAPTAIN RAJU, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Photo: GuentherZ, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)









