Steingasse
Narrow medieval lane of tanners and brothels, marked by red lanterns and a Silent Night birthplace legend.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Steingasse in Salzburg starts by correcting a plaque that has been quietly wrong for two hundred years, misplacing the birth house of Joseph Mohr, who wrote the words to Silent Night. You'll hear about the lane's long life among tanners, dyers and brothels still marked by red lanterns, and about an unmarried seamstress named Anna Schoiber, who gave birth here in December 1792 after the father, a soldier named Franz Mohr, deserted her. The guide follows the search for someone respectable willing to stand as the baby's godfather, and finds no one willing to step forward. Look up at the lanterns still hanging over the doorways as you walk.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Getreidegasse Street
Arcaded medieval lane of wrought-iron guild signs and hidden through-house passages.
Linzer Gasse
Cobbled right-bank lane of century-old craftsmen's houses turned boutiques and cafes.
Mozart's Birthplace
Cramped third-floor apartment above a merchant's shop where a musical prodigy was born in seventeen fifty-six.
Altstadt Salzburg
Pedestrian old-town core of arcaded courtyards, market squares and narrow medieval lanes below a hilltop fortress.
Georg Trakl Geburtshaus
Preserved family apartment of an expressionist poet, with original furniture in a historic courtyard townhouse.
Mozartsteg
Art Nouveau footbridge over a glacial river, once a private toll crossing until nineteen twenty-one.