Salzburg's local mountains - From Untersberg to Maria Plain

 

Director: Stefan Sternad, Camera: Stefan Sternad

 

Production: ORFIII & ipFILM

 

Documentary film: 43 min./2019

 

 

The cinematic journey through four seasons across Salzburg's local mountains begins with the highest mountain, the legendary Untersberg, covered in metres of snow.

 

 

"The view, simply tremendous. The two mountains in the middle of the city, you're standing on the Mönchsberg, the Kapuzinerberg looks over from the other side, and in the valley in between, a thousand churches and monasteries strung along the green, sparkling Salzach river," is how bestselling author Wolf Haas' eyes wander over the city of Salzburg.

 

The impressive rocky panorama of the Hellbrunnerberg allows us to look back thousands of years into the history of the earth and Celtic expert Alfred Winter tells the story of the stone theatre in Hellbrunn, which English scientists have described as the Stonehenge of Salzburg.

 

The journey also takes us to Salzburg in the 1820s: Johann Michael Sattler created a unique work of art, which he painted with a view from the Mönchsberg: The Salzburg Panorama. The secrets of the wintry city forest on the Kapuzinerberg also include the only chamois in an urban area in Europe.

 

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Just as unique are the vineyard on the Mönchsberg opposite, or the saxophone-playing monk at the window in Mülln. Festival President Helga Rabl-Stadler talks about the uniqueness of the landscape and its effect on the art between the Mönchsberg and Kapuzinerberg.

 

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Adventurous stories such as that of the cog railway up the Festungsberg come to the fore, as does that of the serpentine road up the Gaisberg in 1928. The first road was built purely for tourist purposes and from 1929 also served as a legendary race track. Ernst Piech drove it again for us in his vintage car. The journey of the local mountains ends where Mozart once sought the silence above the city: at the Calvary in Maria Plain, with a unique panoramic view of the city mountains.

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