Up until 1816, SALZBURG led a separate life to the rest of Austria, existing as an independent city-state ruled by a sequence of powerful prince-archbishops . An ambitious and cultured bunch, they turned the city into the most Italianate city north of the Alps. Spread out below the brooding presence of the Hohensalzburg fortress, the churches, squares and alleyways of the compact Altstadt today recollect a long-disappeared Europe. For many, Salzburg is the quintessential Austria, offering the best of the country's Baroque architecture, subalpine scenery and a musical heritage largely provided by the city's most famous son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , whose bright-eyed visage peers from every box of the ubiquitous chocolate delicacy, the Mozartkügel . Salzburg's captivation with Mozart is perhaps best reflected in the world-famous Salzburg Festival , a five-week celebration of opera, orchestral music and theatre that begins in late July, although there's a wide range of (not always Mozart-related) musical events on offer throughout the year. Souvenirs recalling the Salzburg-based musical The Sound of Music dangle round the city's neck like some bad-taste medallion, with coach tours and shows on the same theme providing an entertainingly lowbrow alternative to the more highbrow events.

Standing at the centre of a prosperous, economically booming region, Salzburg also represents Austria at its most conservative . Writer Thomas Bernhard, an acerbic critic of the postwar state who spent his formative years in Salzburg, called his home town "a fatal illness", whose Catholicism, conservatism and sheer snobbery drove its citizens to a state of terminal misery. The city certainly has a strong bourgeois ethos, easy to discern in the snooty cafés and refined restaurants of the city centre, and in a pre-Lent ball season that rivals that of Vienna. But if high culture and high society don't really turn you on, you can always take solace in the city's alternative nightlife or join the crowds at the football stadium - the local team, SV Salzburg, is one of the few outfits outside Vienna that enjoys a genuine mass following.

Salzburg is buzzing twelve months a year and there's not really a best time at which to come. Spring and summer bring a wealth of colour to the city's parks and the surrounding hills, and this period draws the biggest tourist crowds, although the Advent season (from the end of November through to Christmas) is an atmospheric and increasingly popular period. There's a Christkindlmarkt (Christmas market) in the square outside the cathedral, with stalls selling all kinds of handicrafts alongside irredeemable tat, and ad-hoc kiosks doling out sausage, Schmalzbrot (bread and dripping) and gallons of Glühwein, bringing an outdoor party atmosphere to the winter evenings.

Bearing in mind that there's no real low season here, accommodation tends to be constantly overpriced, oversubscribed or both. Once you've found yourself a place to stay, however, you'll find the city to be an easily manageable, hassle-free place to explore. The local bus and rail network makes Salzburg a convenient base from which to visit the lakes of the Salzkammergut to the east, and the historic towns of Hallein and Werfen to the south. It's also handily placed for much of southeast Germany: Munich is only ninety minutes away by train.