Leopoldskroner Weiher

This guide to Leopoldskroner Weiher in Salzburg opens in 1931, when an open-air theatre built on this shore staged Shakespeare once, using the pond itself as a set, before a mountain thunderstorm ended its run for good. It follows Max Reinhardt, the theatre director who bought the crumbling palace across the water in 1918 and spent two decades rebuilding it into a stage the size of a park, gathering collaborators like Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss who helped sketch the plans for the Salzburg Festival. It also returns to the water decades later, when film crews came back for another production entirely. Stand at the shoreline and look toward the palace and the fortress beyond it.