Salzburg Residenz

Salzburg's early bishops were also abbots of St Peter's and lived in the monastery. Conrad I moved his household out of the cloister in 1120 — the palace is first documented at about that date — and in 1124 built a new bishop's residence on the ground of what is now the eastern part of the Residenz. That seat was enlarged repeatedly; restoration work has since found late-medieval burgher-house walls inside the fabric. Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau had it pulled down to clear ground for a late-Renaissance replacement.

From 1597 Wolf Dietrich began demolishing and rebuilding the ranges around the present main courtyard, producing by stages a four-winged block around a regular court. The principal rooms on the second floor were reached by a broad straight marble stair that survives from a change of plan around 1612. How quickly the ranges rose is disputed, one account having them structurally complete by 1604 and another dating the campaign 1606–1611.

The Hofbogengebäude, the wing later called the Wallistrakt, was begun in spring 1604 south-west of the main courtyard and finished in 1606, raised in the medieval Frohnhof in front of the cathedral, where an archiepiscopal apartment could go up without disturbing the working Residence. Vincenzo Scamozzi, a pupil of Palladio, is repeatedly linked to the design: he was in Salzburg in 1603–04 drawing up a project for Wolf Dietrich that covered a new cathedral and the renovation of the episcopal residence. A change to the original façade sketch shows that plan or planner altered between 1604 and 1606. From 1605 the two-part Dietrichsruh gardens were laid out north of the Franciscan church, building over the old Käsgasse and more than doubling the ground the Residenz covered.

Markus Sittikus von Hohenems added a new north wing to the main courtyard between 1612 and 1614. The Carabinierisaal, built around 1600 and the largest hall in the palace, saw the first recorded theatre performances north of the Alps, probably from 27 January 1614; the pastoral staged there on 10 February 1614 was probably Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. Guidobald von Thun had the hall raised in 1660 as the Dombögen were built, and in 1665–67 added a storey to the Residenzplatz range.

Johann Ernst von Thun began a wholesale redecoration in 1689, the year Johann Michael Rottmayr frescoed the Carabinierisaal ceiling with the four elements. Almost every room was drawn into one continuous cycle on the life of Alexander the Great, painted by Rottmayr and Martino Altomonte between 1710 and 1714. Franz Anton von Harrach then gave the Residenzplatz front a new façade, most likely designed by Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, who from 1711 directed the renewal of the state rooms, with stucco by Alberto Camesina.

The seven-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made his concert debut at the Salzburg court in the Konferenzsaal on 28 February 1763, and later played in these rooms as court musician to the archbishop; the Rittersaal saw the first performances of Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots KV 35 and Il re pastore KV 208. Hieronymus von Colloredo, the last prince-archbishop (1772–1803), had the ranges towards Churfürststraße and Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse — parts of the Dietrichsruh — demolished and partly rebuilt in 1788–92, sweeping away the ornamental courtyard gardens of Wolf Dietrich and Markus Sittikus. In 1793 the rest was abandoned on cost grounds and only the Toskanatrakt was completed; a plan to pull down the Franciscan church and replace it with a court chapel, a rotunda in the Roman manner, was dropped as well. Salzburg was secularised in 1803.

Until 1918 the Residenz housed members of the Austrian imperial house, above all Emperor Francis's widow Caroline Augusta of Bavaria; leading members of the Habsburg-Tuscany line, driven out of Florence, lived here too and gave the Toskanatrakt its name. After the First World War the Residenzmuseum proposed an art gallery; Salzburg's official curator Eduard Hütte completed the planning in 1922 and the Residenzgalerie opened in 1923, intended to replace the prince-archbishops' collection lost in the Napoleonic wars. It shows European painting of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

The Toskanatrakt served as the seat of the federal police directorate until 1986 and has belonged to the law faculty of the University of Salzburg since 1992. The listed palace runs to more than 180 rooms, among them fifteen state rooms, and both they and the gallery are shown on the DomQuartier Salzburg circuit.