Historic Centre of the City of Salzburg
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How it came to be
People have lived on the site of Salzburg's old town without a break since the Neolithic. After the Roman invasion of 15 BC the hilltop settlements were abandoned and a Roman town was built where the old town now stands. As Iuvavum it became a municipium in AD 45 and one of the most important towns of the province of Noricum.
Around 696 Bishop Rupert received the remains of the Roman town as a gift from Duke Theodo II of Bavaria. Rupert built a church of St Peter on the site of today's cathedral and probably also founded the monastery beside it and the nunnery on the Nonnberg. Salzburg became a bishop's see in 739 and an archbishopric in 798. Its name comes from the salt barges on the River Salzach, and in 1077 Archbishop Gebhard built Hohensalzburg Fortress on the hill above.
The archbishops ruled the city as princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and it flourished most under Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, Markus Sittikus and Paris Lodron in the late 16th and 17th centuries. Wolf Dietrich had the old cathedral, badly damaged in 1598, pulled down and asked the Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi for a new design. The cornerstone was laid in 1614, and the cathedral, redesigned in large part by Santino Solari, was consecrated on 24 September 1628. Mozart, born in the city in 1756, was baptised there. The archbishopric was secularised in 1803, and the historic centre was inscribed in 1996.
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