Salzburg Cathedral

About

Rising at the heart of Salzburg's Altstadt, the cathedral that stands today is a seventeenth-century Baroque achievement, yet its lineage reaches back more than thirteen centuries. The current edifice was raised under Prince-Bishop Markus Sittich von Hohenems beginning in 1614, following plans first sketched by Vincenzo Scamozzi and reworked by Santino Solari, and was consecrated in 1628.

The sanctuary is jointly dedicated to Saint Rupert, the apostle of the region, and Saint Vergilius, an Irish-born bishop who built the earliest church on this site in 774 atop the ruins of the Roman city of Juvavum. Two later Romanesque basilicas occupied the same ground before fire and structural decline opened the way for the present Italianate design.

The twin-towered marble facade carries figures of the four patrons, Rupert, Vergilius, Peter and Paul, and is framed by three bronze portals representing faith, hope and love, cast in the late 1950s. Within, the church measures 142 metres in length and rises 33 metres at the dome, where a single Allied bomb pierced the vault in 1944, with restoration finally completed in 1959.

For pilgrims and visitors alike the cathedral preserves a fourteenth-century Gothic baptismal font, the same in which the infant Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was christened on 28 January 1756. The relics of Saint Rupert rest within its walls, and excavated foundations of the earlier sanctuaries can be viewed in the Domgrabungen beneath the nave.

History

Saint Vergilius raised the first cathedral on this site in 774, on ground that had once been the Roman forum of Juvavum, and successive archbishops rebuilt and enlarged it through the early Middle Ages after a lightning fire in 842. Severely damaged by fire in 1598, the old Romanesque basilica was demolished by Prince-Bishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, and his successor Markus Sittich von Hohenems laid the cornerstone of the present Baroque cathedral in 1614 to a design by Santino Solari. The new sanctuary was consecrated in 1628, and a single Allied bomb that pierced its dome in 1944 was not fully repaired until 1959.

Significance

Salzburg Cathedral has stood for centuries as the spiritual heart of the Archdiocese of Salzburg and a touchstone of Central European Baroque architecture, its enclosed Domplatz linking the church to the Residenz and Saint Peter's Abbey through three arcaded gates. Each September the feast of Saint Rupert, apostle of the region, is still kept around the cathedral in the Rupertikirtag, one of Austria's oldest continuing church fairs.

Architecture

Early Baroque architecture north of the Alps, a twin-towered marble facade on a Latin-cross plan with a central dome