NYT: Austria’s Hills Are Still Alive, 60 Years Later
NYT: Austria’s Hills Are Still Alive, 60 Years Later
MezzA101
Broadway Star Joined: 3/29/23
#2NYT: Austria’s Hills Are Still Alive, 60 Years Later
Posted: 8/31/25 at 7:00pm
It's easy to pooh-pooh the schlockiness and lowest-common-denominator appeal of doing the Sound of Music tour when in Salzburg. Hell, I never even liked the SOM film as a kid. HOWEVER...
On our first trip to Salzburg 2 years ago (I had just turned 67), my husband and I read up on all the shooting locations of the film, and created our own improvised walking tour from the Mirabell Gardens to the Salzburg Festspielhaus and everywhere in between. We drove the 10 minutes out of town to find the locked gate of the ACTUAL Von Trapp villa (not a movie location) which is now a classy B&B. We made a pilgrimage to Hellbrun Palace (quite a ways from Salzburg) to enjoy the grounds where a facsimile of the Gazebo now sits rather forlornly, looking much smaller than the one built for the film on a soundstage back at Fox.
Best of all, on one of my morning jogs up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress atop the town, imagine my thrill to spot the red-tiled peaked tower that I knew from research belonged to Nonberg Abbey. A minute later I was standing at the wrought iron gate leading to the Abbey's courtyard-- in a blissful daze that I could only share with myself (and maybe the cinema angels that had guided me this way on my jog).
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