Salzburg Day 1
Sunday, July 7th, 2024It felt good to get on the train in Regensburg heading for Salzburg and start our own itinerary for the second week of the trip
We didnt know what the place we selected to stay in for three nights called “Gaestehaus in Priesterseminar”–Guesthouse in the priest seminary–would be like, but it sounded intriguing.
When the taxi from the train station pulled up in front of the cathedral facing a plaza in the center of the old city, we thought the driver was lost.
But the number on the majestic portal was correct.
After checking in at the reception desk we approached our room on the second floor through a courtyard graced with fountain and formal garden.
The elevator was modern and the room itself light and spacious, but with an austere flavor–no tv, minibar, decorations of any sort–looking out through heavy double paned windows on a restaurant plaza below. Adjoining it on the corridor was a closed doorway with a sign indicating that the rest of building was reserved for the seminarians.
Eventually I came across more information :
Archbishop Johann Ernst Graf von Thun und Hohenstein, who was nicknamed “The Donor”, is responsible for the construction of the Trinity Church and the seminary. A three-part complex was built in 1693 according to the plans of the later imperial court architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. The Trinity Church was the celebrated architect’s first sacred building. Since 1699, the seminary has been the training centre for prospective priests of the Archdiocese of Salzburg.
I was curious about unusual conglomerate stone which formed the pillars of the arcade surrounding the courtyard and the steps leading off it down to a crypt.
It turned out to be a typical feature attributable to Salzburg’s geological environment:
… at the northern rim of the Northern
Calcareous Alps, within a basin overprin-
ted by glacial activity during the latest ice ages. As
a result, parts of the city hills are composed of
Mönchsberg Conglomerate which has been inten-
sely exploited as building material for monaste-
ries, churches, palaces and fortifications for many
centuries… The material was quarried since the Roman times
till the middle of the 20 th century.