Mirabell Palace
Bastion garden lined with marble statues of dwarfs who once entertained a baroque court.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the dwarf garden at Mirabell Palace in Salzburg opens with a puzzle: twenty-eight marble figures once stood here, modeled on the real people with dwarfism who entertained the archbishop's court in the early seventeen hundreds, carved from poses the French artist Jacques Callot had drawn as mocking caricatures. It follows how the Enlightenment turned against the display, leading Salzburg to banish and auction the statues in the early eighteen hundreds, scattering them as far as Bavaria. It picks up the decades-long search that followed, tracking pieces down estate by estate. See how many of the stone faces around you still look uneasy about being watched.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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