Leopoldskron Palace / Schloß Leopoldskron

For many years the "Sound of Music" house has been something that we've admired from across the lake, dreaming of what the inside might be like - imagining the Von Trapps singing in the ballroom and lining up on the patio, dripping wet, after falling into the water, just like they did in the movie. Years ago, the famous gazebo where "I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen" was moved from the property of Schloß Leopoldskron (the real name of the palace used in the filming of the movie) because there were too many nosy tourists trying to sneak in and take a look. It is a place of wonder and mystique, and a place that is completely inaccesible to the common man.

The Schloß was built in 1736 by the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, Leopold Anton Eleutherius Freiherr von Firmian (what a name!). He never lived in it, dying shortly after construction was completed, although his heart is entombed in the private chapel on the ground floor. The palace had a number of rather un-noteworthy owners until 1918 when Max Reinhardt (yes, the same Max Reinhardt who is trying to find a new singing group for the Salzburg Festival in the Sound of Music) bought the house and created a cultural venue for theater and music and art. In 1938, when Germany annexed Austria, the Nazi Regime took over the palace. Long story short, in 1947, three Harvard men (two students and one English instructor) used the Schloß for a summer program in which European and American students could come together and gain a better understanding of each other after a divisive war. It was the first Salzburg Global Seminar, something that has developed into a renowned institution in the last sixty years, attracting people from around the world to think and discuss a variety of global issues. Only those involved in the Salzburg Global Seminar are allowed through the gates.

So why all this history for a place you can't get into unless you are part of the Global Seminar? Because we got in!

The day after Inauguration Day we opened up the newspaper to find a double page spread covering Inauguration Day parties and interview snippets with Americans in Salzburg. Much to our surprise, we found an old friend from our former Salzburg days photographed there. We had thought we knew of all the ex-SIPSters in Salzburg, but we were wrong. A quick Google search and, after a dozen or so years, we were back in touch. Nancy has been in Salzburg for eight years working with Salzburg Global Seminar and living in the Meierhof, the older stable building right next to the Schloß. We've been trying to get together since then, and finally managed to find a time that worked, and our visit included a wander through the palace.

The Schloß is magical. The rooms have been beautifully restored, full of gold and mirrors and enormous wall paintings. The chapel is just as it was two hundred and fifty years ago, the only room that hasn't been 'modernized' at all. The Venetian Room was the model for the ball room in the Sound of Music and the Chinese Room still has a few sentimental shrapnel holes in the walls from WWII bombs that exploded in the lake just outside. The library, Max Reinhardt's favorite room, has a secret staircase up to a inner balcony hidden within a glass-fronted bookshelf that delighted Nikolas to no end.

The fact that there weren't hoards of people everywhere and that you could have run your fingers over the oil paintings or swung from the elaborate chandeliers if you had wanted to, made this a very special palace visit indeed. It's no wonder that Salzburg Global Seminar keeps things closed up. They are sitting on a gold mine!