Hettwer Bastei (Lodronsche Wehranlage)

This guide to the Hettwer Bastei in Salzburg opens with a puzzle: in 1849 the city let a disabled veteran with nothing but a small pension do something nobody expects from two centuries of war architecture. To get there it goes back to Prince-Archbishop Paris Lodron, who raised these bastion walls and watchtowers around 1630 in the panic of the Thirty Years' War, funded by brutal new taxes and built to guard the river crossing below. You'll hear how the war that justified all that stone never actually reached Salzburg, and how the garrison manning these gun slits dwindled to a handful of aging soldiers over two peaceful centuries. Stand at the old gun slits and trace the angle they were built to cover down toward the water.