ST
SEBASTIEN’S CEMETERY - SALZBURG
The Mozarts, Paracelsus and Wolf Dietrich Mausoleum
The royals of the Imperial days of Austria are laid elsewhere in the crypts of Vienna or Innsbruck, but the resting place of the prominent upper class and merchant families of old Salzburg is the fascinating cemetery of St Sebastien’s Church with it Wolf Dietrich Mausoleum, down a narrow medieval lane, the Linzergasse, not far from the birth house of home town hero, Wolfgang Mozart. The original church of the late Gothic age was built under the order of the Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach, from 1505 to 1512 (see Hohensalzburg Fortress), and dedicated to St Sebastien, the patron saint of the sick, in memorium of the Black Plague which swept the continent in the 1400s.
The church was outside the city walls when first built, but over time surrounded by it, now rather hidden in a pedestrian section. The early church was rebuilt in the grand Baroque style in 1750, with the addition of the onion dome to its tower, but suffered in a devastating fire which swept Salzburg in 1818. The church has undergone modern restoration work returning to some of its earlier glory, with its high altar decorated with a beautiful Madonna with Child by Hans Waldburger and Rococo entrance portal by Josef Anton Pfaffinger, but what draws visitors are the noted graves in the colonnaded passage courtyard cemetery and mausoleum next to the church.
The cemetery built in the style of an Italian “campo santi”, that particular form of walled open mausoleum arcades of the dead. This style of above ground cemetery was originally to protect the dead from flood plains in the days of Rome and early middle ages, but took on an artistic significance in the Renaissance and Baroque period with magnificent examples like the original Campo Santo in Pisa and later renditions like the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb. The St Sebastien Mausoleum (St Sebastien Friedhof) was commissioned by the Prince Bishop of Salzburg, Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, whose passion for building formed much the shape of Salzburg. Dietrich had engaged Habsburg court architect Andrea Bertoleto (Bertoletti) in 1589 for his ambitious projects and ordered the cemetery design in 1595 to replace the earlier church graveyard., but the designer himself died before its completion in 1600.
Some rather eerie sculptures and reliefs line the arcades, a reminder of the impermanence of life and the calling of the grim reaper on all. The burials had been added over the centuries, generally with stone plaque added to the family sites. Among the tombs of the passage is the famous early physician-alchemist Philippus Theophrastus von Hohenheim called “Paracelsus” whose uses of the techniques of alchemy in the formations of medicinal treatments made him the father of pharmacology who died in 1541 (see Basel Pharmacy Museum and Heidelberg Castle Aphothecary). His bones were moved from an earlier grave and the effigy added with the 1752 reconstruction.
Mozart Graves
Perhaps the biggest draw of the St Sebastien Cemetery are the headstones of the Mozart family in the center of the grassy slightly overgrown courtyard. Rather modest gold painted engraved markers, but the most known to tourist to the city of Mozart (see Mozart Birthhouse and Museums). You won't find the famous composer’s grave here, famously dumped in an unmarked pauper’s grave outside the walls of Vienna after dying under notoriously mysterious circumstances (see Where Mozart Died). In a family cluster are the markers of the composer’s father Leopold Mozart, wife Contanze (Constantia on the marker) along with her second husband Geog Nikolas von Nissen, whom she married after returning to Salzburg (see Tomaselli’s Café). Also in the group is Constanze’s aunt, Genovefa von Weber, noted as the mother of the composer Carl Maria von Weber.
Enscriptions:
Constantia von Nissen
Wife of Mozart
Born von Weber in Troyburg,
January 1763
Died Here 6 May 1842
Leopold Mozart
High Court Vice Choral Master
born in Augsburg Nov 1719
Died, 28 May 1787
Wolf Dietrich Mausoleum
Most prominent in the center of the courtyard is the tomb for the Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich himself, who died in an epileptic seizure while under arrest and imprisoned in the Hohensalzburg Castle in 1617. His building plans had come to stop in a dispute with the King of Bavaria in a dispute over the control of salt mining rights which built the city’s wealth. The cylindrical tomb the Gabriel Chapel which takes its name from the motifs of the archangel trumpeting the end of the world was designed by Elia Castello, with ornate marble altar and statues of the archangels added during the Baroque expansion of the church. The designer-architect Castello who presumably took over from Bertoletto also has a burial monument and relief effigy in the arcades.
Visiting the St Sebastien Cemetery and Wolf Dietrich Mausoleum
The cemetery is open from 9am to 7pm April to October and 9am to 4pm November to March. Admission is free of charge. In the winter months the entrance is only through the Feuerwache Bruderhof passage. There are a couple of small historic hotels nearby, dating back sveral hundred years, though not the eponymous and rather opportunistic Wolf Dietrich Hotel which stands visible above the walls of the cemetery. © Bargain Travel Europe
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