I walked round to Domplatz to get some photos of the stunning white west façade of the Dom, Salzburg's cathedral, and of the statue in the centre of the square, with the light in just the right place. I had to dodge around quite a few tourists, and probably got in the way of some myself, but at least I wasn't sitting on the statue and spoiling it for other photographers! Inside I was bowled over by the ceiling frescoes, and I tried to do my best to get decent photos. Also some photos of the font, to the left of the main door, in which Mozart was christened. There is an excellent history of the Dom on the Salzburg information website (click the flags to choose your language) from which this is an edited extract:
"The first cathedral was built on the site of the former Roman Juvavum by Bishop Virgil, who came to Salzburg in 767. In 774 the cathedral was consecrated to St Virgil and St Rupert. The city was set on fire in 1167 by the Counts of Plain, followers of the emperor Friedrick Barbarossa, also destroying the cathedral. It was rebuilt ten years later under the rule of Archbishop Conrad III of Wittelsbach and became more beautiful, more magnificent and more impressive than ever, making it the mightiest Romaneque cathedral north of the Alps, its size even surpassing the emperor's cathedral in Speyer.
400 years later another fire raged and destroyed large sections of the cathedral on December 11, 1598. This afforded Archbishop Wolf Dietrich the opportunity to tear down the damaged cathedral and to make plans for its reconstruction. The Salzburg residents were outraged at the archbishop's ruthless actions. Not only were valuable sculptures and gravestones of the archbishops destroyed but the cathedral cemetery plowed and the bones of the dead dumped on the debris. His quarrel with Bavaria over salt mining rights led to his arrest and imprisonment in the Hohensalzburg Fortress by his nephew and successor, Markus Sittikus von Hohenems.
After Wolf Dietrich's death the architect Santino Solari was commissioned by Archbishop Markus Sittikus to rebuild the Cathedral, which became the first early Baroque church north of the Alps. Markus Sittikus did not live to see the festive consecration of the Cathedral by Archbishop Paris Lodron during the chaos of the Thirty Years' War on September 25, 1628. Through Paris Lodron's clever diplomacy, the heavily fortified city escaped most of the hardships of the war, so that the consecration of the Cathedral became the largest and most pompous festival that Salzburg ever experienced. The centuries of sovereign rule by the Salzburg prince bishops was ended by the Napoleonic Wars." |
