Salzburg’s Art Nouveau River Crossing: The Mozartsteg
The Mozartsteg spans the Salzach at the eastern edge of the old town, carrying pedestrians and cyclists between the Rudolfskai and Mozartplatz on the left bank and the Imbergstraße and Steingasse on the right. It's one of more than a dozen bridges and footbridges that cross the river inside the city, but at closer to 100 metres of slender riveted iron resting on two stone piers, it remains one of the most distinctive.
The Mozartsteg opened on 29 March 1903, a privately funded project. A society formed expressly for the purpose, the Mozartstegverein, raised the money, and a Viennese ironworks supplied the riveted iron framework. The result was a graceful Art Nouveau span, named in honour of Mozart and pointed straight at the square that already carried his name. A plaque on the bridge still credits its builders.
The Mozartsteg arrived during a busy period for Salzburg's riverfront. For centuries a single bridge had carried almost all traffic over the Salzach in the city, but once the river was regulated in the later 19th century, several new bridges and footbridges went up within a few decades, the Mozartsteg among them. Its Art Nouveau styling places it firmly at the turn of the century, when the city was rebuilding the way it crossed its own river.
For its first years the Mozartsteg was private property, and crossing it cost a toll. A small toll house was built on the old town side to collect the fee. That little building still stands, is protected as a monument, and today houses We Love Coffee, often described as Salzburg’s smallest coffee house. The arrangement ended in 1921, when the city of Salzburg bought the bridge and opened it free of charge to pedestrians and cyclists, as it remains today.
The Mozartsteg owes its lasting fame to Hollywood. In the 1965 film The Sound of Music, Maria and the children cross the Mozartsteg during the “My Favorite Things” sequence, with the Hohensalzburg Fortress forming one of the film’s recognisable Salzburg backdrops. The fortress sits squarely behind the old town rooftops from here, and six decades on the scene is still clearly recognisable, which is why film fans still seek the spot out.
The bridge has been carefully maintained across its long life, with a general refurbishment in 1992/93 and another major renovation in 2011, when the iron structure was de-rusted and protected against corrosion and the former wooden deck was replaced with a sand-coated stainless-steel surface. Today the Mozartsteg is a protected historic structure, valued as much for its design and its film cameo as for the simple job it has done for more than a century: getting people, dryly and scenically, from one bank of the Salzach to the other.
