ONE OF THE FINEST DOORS OF THE STATE APARTMENTS IN THE FORTRESS, SALZBURG
REBUILDING THE CITY
During the period of which we speak the character and appearance of the city was almost entirely changed. The ancient mediæval buildings were pulled down, and replaced by magnificent palaces in which the nobility and ecclesiastical dignitaries dwelt in splendour and ease. Churches were erected in such numbers as to be almost unequalled in any other city of similar size. Most of these still remain, making Salzburg a place of spires and domes and handsome churches strangely picturesque and deeply interesting.
Seen either from the ridge of the Mönchsberg, the Kapuzingerberg, or from the castle walls, especially at sundown on a summer's evening, Salzburg presents a picture of great beauty and colour, and one which is not easily forgotten.
As was not unnatural with the secularization of the power ruling the Province the capital suffered heavily. For a time both its prosperity and its intellectual life underwent eclipse. For almost half a century its energies seemed to lie dormant, and it was only when the line connecting Munich with Vienna by way of Salzburg was constructed in 1860 that it woke once more to take an important place amongst the towns of north-western Austria. From that period till to-day the place has made steady progress.
Till the middle of the last century the city occupied a comparatively restricted area within the old walls. And as a direct consequence of the numerous churches, convents, and other ecclesiastical buildings occupying a great deal of the space available the townsfolk were compelled to crowd their dwellings together, and to build the many storied houses which one finds in the older portion of the town in the neighbourhood of the Herrngasse, Sigmund-Haffnergasse, and Getreidegasse. It is in these narrow and gloomy—though undoubtedly picturesque—streets, in the architecture of which one can in many instances trace Italian influence, that the great part of the population dwelt, and much of the trade of the town was done.
With more modern ideas the distaste for such confinement among the more ambitious and well-to-do of the commercial and artisan classes became manifest, and when at length the old walls were in places pulled down a new suburb arose on the other side of the river—as it did at Innsbruck—in the neighbourhood of the railway station, possessing wide modern streets, finer shops, and palatial villa residences, and also smaller houses for the occupation of the working-class community.
In this portion of the town one finds not only some of the best hotels, but the Kurhaus with its pleasant gardens (closely adjoining the Mirabell Garden), the fine Theatre, and the imposing church of St. Andreas in the Gothic style. Opposite the railway station, set in a recess of foliage in the garden adjoining the Hôtel de l'Europe, is the famous statue of the Kaiserin Elizabeth, a pilgrimage shrine for most visitors to the town. The statue itself has been described as "simple but beautiful." To us it has always seemed by no means an adequate or even very skilful representation of a beautiful and queenly personality. The pose is not particularly happy, and the whole has to our mind a "doll-like" effect.