St. Gilgen— St. Giles

There is a little village in the shadow of the mountains by the Wolfgangsee (lake really), which is the birth place of Mozart’s mom. It’s name is St. Gilgen, which is the equivalent of St. Giles, a rather odd name for an Austrian town. Mozart actually never visited the city, though the tourist rhetoric associates him with the town, to get tourists to come. It is worth a visit all by itself anyway, as it is beautiful, rather like a little Swiss chalet village, as you will now see. Here are your tour guides 🙂

And here is the St. Gilgen marker….

Actually here is our tour guide Hans, feeding the swans….

As for the setting of the little 3,000 person village, it is spectacular…

The little church there in the distance is where the movie wedding of Maria (Sound of Music) was filmed.

Ready to visit the place yet?

If not, consider some of the buildings and shops….
Here is the main street….

What you have here of course is mostly hotels, pensiones and gift shops…
can you say tourist trap???

Here’s the Mozart connection…

And here’s the Gospel and church presence….

And here’s the Swiss alpine look….

And here’s your basic swanky bank…

And I’m sure you’ll recognize the post office which looks just like the ones we have here in Kentucky…

Did I mention that the place is crawling with gasts????

Turns out, every Mozart came here, including his sister after she got married, except Wolfgang Amadeus himself…. maybe he knew it was a tourist trap, a nice place to visit but…….