Photos

The ‘favorite son’ of Salzburg, indeed the favorite son of Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was born in Salzburg 250 years ago, and is featured on the Euro minted in Austria (in distinction, e.g. to Leonardo’s ‘Vitruvian Man featured on the Euro minted in Italy). The unrivaled architectural gem of the city, however, is not Mozart's birthplace, but the magnificent Fortress of Salzburg (Hohensalzburg), built by Bishop Gephard beginning in 1077. Perched high on the acropolis of Salzburg, the castle underwent extensive renovation and expansion four hundred years later during its occupancy by Archbishop Leonard von Keutschach. In the 1984 film, ‘Amadeus,’ the precocious Mozart is called to perform for the bishop in the castle.

In 1989 I had been invited to give a pair of talks at the Boltzman Institute in Vienna, and after my task was completed, I did some site seeing aroung Vienna, traipsing in the footsteps of Beethoven, and I took an overnight excursion to visit Salzburg, Mozart’s city. A steep path leads the visitor to the castle (and palace) on the hilltop, and along the way, openings in the walls allows one to have a bird’s eye view of the city and the meandering Salzach River.

My camera at the time was a Nikon 2020, loaded with Kodachrome-64 slide film. I scanned the slide and made minor corrections — increasing the sharpness and the contrast. It is always a conundrum, whether to focus on the foreground (in this instance, the iron bars in the window) or the view beyond. Here I focused more on the latter, although by shooting with a small aperture, I avoided an entirely blurred image of the ironwork.