What do Max Reinhardt, Karl Heinrich Waggerl, Romy Schneider, Marlene Dietrich and Udo Jürgens have in common? They have all been guests of the, steeped in history. Café Bazar in Salzburg, enjoying the legendary Austrian coffee house culture.
“The Salzburg Festival is a detour – the Café Bazar is the true destination“, said the author Anton Kuhn tongue firmly in cheek in 1928, writing about the Café Bazar. History has been written at the Café Bazar – and even today the coffee house is a popular place for writers to work or get inspiration.
Austiran Coffee House Culture with Tradition
The building the Café Bazar calls home today was built in the early 1880s and was designed by the famous Salzburg architects, the brothers Ceconi. At the beginning of the 20th century, the building on the bank of the river Salzach housed many small shops, for this reason it was known as the bazar building, hence the name Café Bazar.
The birth of the Café Bazar, as guests from Salzburg and all over the world know and love it today, was on September 23rd 1909. Richard Tomaselli, brother of Otto Tomaselli, who had inherited the 100 year old Café Tomaselli at the Alter Markt square, opened the gates of the Café Bazar as a coffee house in the old Viennese tradition.
In 1999 Walter Müller wrote a book about the Cafe Bazar that describes the moving and prominent history of the Salzburg coffeehouse.
Names from the guest book of the Café Bazar in Salzburg
The Café Bazar has always had a guest book from the year 1927 to the present day. Within its pages you find a "who is who" of the most illustrious guests of the City of Mozart:
Max Reinhardt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Marlene Dietrich, Attila Hörbiger, Paula Wessely, Bertha Zuckerkandl, Karl Heinrich Waggerl, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Thomas Bernhard, Friedrich Torberg, Arturo Toscanini, Romy Schneider, Oskar Werner, Arthur Miller, Maria Schell, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Udo Jürgens, Seiji Ozawa, Nina Hoss, Tobias Moretti, Peter Simonischek, Iris Berben and many more.
Write your own story at the Café Bazar during your holidays in Salzburg – together with your sweetheart, your family or friends.
Picture credits: archiv of the Salzburger Festival / Photo Ellinger