St. Peter's Cemetery & Catacombs

This cemetery has been in continuous use since around 700 AD, making it one of the oldest burial grounds in the German-speaking world. Tucked against the sheer rock face of the Festungsberg, directly below Hohensalzburg Fortress, the Petersfriedhof is a place where wrought-iron crosses, Baroque tomb markers, and flower-covered graves crowd together in a space that feels both impossibly beautiful and quietly unsettling. The oldest surviving tombstone dates from 1288, but people were burying their dead here centuries before anyone thought to label the graves.

Carved into the cliff face above the cemetery are catacombs that predate the cemetery itself. These rock-hewn chambers likely originated as early Christian meeting places during the Migration Period of the 5th century, when Saint Severinus of Noricum ministered to the last Roman communities in the region. They were not burial chambers — they were places of worship and refuge, carved by hand into solid rock at a time when Christianity was still a precarious business north of the Alps.

Two chapels survive inside the catacombs. The Gertraudenkapelle was consecrated in 1178 under Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach and dedicated, remarkably, to Thomas Becket of Canterbury — the English archbishop murdered in his own cathedral only eight years earlier. It is one of the earliest Becket dedications outside England, evidence of how rapidly his martyrdom became an international cause.

Among the notable graves in the cemetery are Mozart's sister Nannerl (Maria Anna Mozart) and Michael Haydn, younger brother of the more famous Joseph and a fine composer in his own right. The late-Gothic Margarethenkapelle in the centre of the grounds is surrounded by the tombs of Salzburg's merchants, scholars, and artists — the people who made this city work while the archbishops got the credit.