Salzburg in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Salzburg covers 15 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Salzburg rewards a detour.

The Salzburg route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 8 stops over about 1 km as the crow flies, from St Peter's Abbey to Mozart's Birthplace. ≈ 1 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. St Peter's Abbey: Salzburg's Benedictine abbey, founded around 696, with a Romanesque-turned-Rococo church, a flower-filled arcaded cemetery holding Mozart's sister, and cliff-cut rock chapels popularly, if wrongly, called catacombs. 0.2 km to the next stop
2. Salzburg Cathedral: Salzburg's early-Baroque cathedral, built by Santino Solari in the 1620s, holds the bronze font where the infant Mozart was baptised and a great dome rebuilt after wartime bombing. 0.1 km to the next stop
3. Residenzplatz: Salzburg's grand ceremonial square, cleared in the 1580s, centred on a giant Baroque marble fountain and framed by the prince-archbishops' residences and the carillon tower, with Fiaker carriages along its edge. 0.1 km to the next stop
4. The Residenz (DomQuartier): A one-ticket museum circuit through the prince-archbishops' Residenz state rooms, picture gallery, cathedral galleries and treasury, reconnected in 2014 after two centuries of the palace and church being separated. 0.2 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Mönchsberg & Museum der Moderne: A marble-clad modern-art museum crowning the cliff above the old town, reached by lift, sharing its plateau with sweeping fortress views and the abseiling rock-cleaners who guard the town. 0.2 km to the next stop
2. Festival Halls (Festspielhaus): Salzburg's festival halls on Hofstallgasse, built into the former court stables and the Moenchsberg rock; home of the Salzburg Festival and the quarried Felsenreitschule stage of Sound of Music fame. 0.2 km to the next stop
3. Collegiate Church (Kollegienkirche): Fischer von Erlach's white Baroque university church, built 1694 to 1707, known for its bowed twin-towered facade and light-filled interior; now a concert venue in Salzburg's World Heritage centre. 0.1 km to the next stop
4. Mozart's Birthplace: The yellow house at Getreidegasse 9 where Mozart was born in 1756 and lived until seventeen, now a museum holding his childhood violin, letters and family apartment.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 7 stops over about 6.9 km as the crow flies, from Getreidegasse to Hellbrunn Palace. ≈ 6.9 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Getreidegasse: Salzburg's best-known medieval shopping lane, narrow and tall, hung with ornate wrought-iron guild signs and threaded by hidden courtyard passages, and home, at number nine, to Mozart's birthplace. 0.3 km to the next stop
2. Mozart Residence (Tanzmeisterhaus): The Mozarts' larger home on Makartplatz, where the family moved in 1773; two-thirds destroyed by a 1944 bomb and faithfully rebuilt, it now displays Mozart's own pianoforte and documents. 0.4 km to the next stop
3. Mirabell Palace & Gardens: A love-gift palace turned city hall, fronted by formal Baroque gardens with a Pegasus fountain, marble dwarfs, and the steps where the Sound of Music do-re-mi was filmed. 1.2 km to the next stop
4. Kapuzinerberg: Salzburg's quiet wooded hill on the far bank, home to free-ranging chamois, a Baroque Capuchin monastery, sweeping fortress views, and the path where the writer Stefan Zweig once walked. 1 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Nonnberg Abbey: A cloistered Benedictine convent below the fortress, said to be the oldest continuously existing in the German-speaking world, where the real Maria von Trapp once trained as a novice. 0.3 km to the next stop
2. Hohensalzburg Fortress: A pale medieval stronghold on the Festungsberg, begun in 1077 and never stormed. One of Europe's largest surviving castles, with a starry Golden Hall and sweeping views over Salzburg. 3.7 km to the next stop
3. Hellbrunn Palace: An early-Baroque pleasure palace built purely for daytime feasts and practical jokes, where 400-year-old trick fountains still ambush unsuspecting visitors using nothing but spring water and simple gravity.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: September 4, 2026

Full Salzburg guide and all stops →