Alter Markt

This guide to Alter Markt in Salzburg opens with a question: who measures the gap between two buildings and decides it's enough to live in. Sometime between 1830 and 1860, a young man did exactly that, the story goes, after a wealthy girl's father told him not to come back until he owned a house on the square himself. You'll also hear about the octagonal fountain that has stood here since the 1680s, its ironwork forged by a craftsman named Wolf Guppenberger, and the Court Pharmacy mixing remedies since 1591. Stand by the doors of Café Tomaselli, which has poured coffee since around 1700, to see what the young man built.