Description of the attraction
Helbrunn Palace is located 6 kilometers south of the city of Salzburg. It was built in 1613-1615 by the famous architect Santino Solari, who also designed the Salzburg Cathedral. The palace was intended as a summer residence for Archbishop Markus Zittikus.
The new prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Markus Zitticus, spent most of his life in Italy and therefore wished to build himself a residence in the style of the Italian Renaissance or Mannerism, a later architectural style. The exterior of this building really resembles a typical Venetian villa. It is a bright and elegant building, painted yellow, featuring one eye-catching annex and funky blue and green shutters. In 1615, on the slope of Mount Helbrunn, a small hunting castle Mountschloss was built in the same style. Now it houses an ethnographic (local history) museum, which displays samples of folk crafts, cultural and household items and other artifacts that tell about the history of this region.
Among the interior rooms of the palace, the main hall is especially luxuriously decorated, the walls and ceiling of which are painted with unique frescoes of the 17th century. The former music room is crowned with an elegant dome.
Of particular interest is the huge park in front of the palace. Its area exceeds 60 hectares. It was created in the mannerism style. There are picturesque ponds and mysterious grottoes, fountains, "crackers" and figures of stone monsters everywhere. The grotto of Neptune is very impressive with a 1000-jet fountain, the grotto of Orpheus and Eurydice, decorated with figures of red marble, and unusual leaden trees equipped with mechanical singing birds. However, the Mechanical Theater, made in 1752, is a real masterpiece of engineering of that era. It consists of 256 figures and depicts scenes from the life of a medieval city. Everything is set in motion only by the power of water, even a small musical organ that is part of the theater.
Another theater stage is located right in the crevice of Mount Helbrunn. It is the oldest open-air theater in Europe. A colorful summer festival takes place here every August. The city zoo was also opened on the territory of the palace park in 1961.
