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Surveying the city from its hilltop perch to the south, the Hohensalzburg fortress originated in the eleventh century, when Archbishop Gebhard, an ally of the pope in the latter's quarrel with the Holy Roman Empire, needed a strongpoint from which to repel the attacks of the south German princes. Most of the present-day fortress is the result of rebuilding work carried out by Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach in the early 1500s, who added some sumptuous state apartments. The quicker of two routes up to the fortress is via the Festungsbahn funicular, from the southern end of Kapitelplatz (daily: May-Sept 9am-9pm; Oct-April 9am-5pm; oS65/?4.72 one way, oS76/?5.52 return; ticket includes entrance to the fortress), but the 15-minute journey on foot isn't as hard as it looks and offers some excellent views of the city along the way. A roam around the main courtyard of the fortress (daily 9am-5pm; oS42/?3.05), together with a few of the surrounding bastions and passageways, is enough to gain a feel for the place, though von Keutschach's state rooms can be visited as part of a forty-minute guided tour for an additional fee (departing on demand, in English if requested; 9.30am-4.30pm; oS42/?3.05). Starting with panoramic views from the castle watchtower, the tour takes in the Furstenzimmer , whose ceiling and doorframes are masterpieces of late-Gothic woodcarving, and a glimpse of Der Stier ("The Bull"), a monstrous sixteenth-century organ whose sonorous tones can be heard all over the city centre on the rare occasions when it's played. The tour concludes with a chance to explore two small museums which can't be visited on their own: the Rainer-Museum (closed mid-Oct to April), displaying uniforms and weapons of the infantry regiment that was stationed in the castle until 1945; and the Burgmuseum , which includes Archbishop Wolf Dietrich's suit of armour, a small collection of Gothic statuary, and instruments of torture, among them grotesque Schandmasken ("masks of shame"), which petty criminals were forced to wear by way of punishment. Paths lead east from the fortress to another example of pre-Baroque Salzburg architecture, the Nonnberg convent , whose church is a largely fifteenth-century rebuilding of a Romanesque structure. The convent was founded by St Rupert's niece St Erentrude, who is shown beside John the Baptist and the Virgin on the tympanum above the main doorway, and whose tomb lies in the church crypt. There's a fine collection of marble memorials to other, later abbesses along the north wall of the nave, and, on the right side of the chancel, a fine late-Gothic winged altar showing the Nativity. Heading west from the Hohensalzburg, trails lead onto the neighbouring Monchsberg hill, a partly wooded area which is a popular Sunday strolling arena. Also accessible from the staircase and lift beside the Festspielhaus, the Monchsberg offers superb views of Salzburg's Baroque monuments, especially from the viewing terrace beside the Naturfreundhaus hostel on the Monchsberg's northwestern tip. Beside the hostel runs a grizzled line of fortifications dating from Paris Lodron's seventeenth-century bastion-building craze, and a maze of leafy pathways leading down towards the suburb of Mulln to the north.
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