Salzburg – holiday in paradise.

Austria – the history of the land of Salzburg

Ivavum is the oldest town and it was named and founded by the kelts. Under the Romans was Ivavum a county in the province of Noricum influence. Since the 6th Century this area (the later land of Salzburg) belonged to the dukedom of Bavaria. The abbey of St. Peter (696) and the convent (713) were build on the ruins of the roman Juvavum from the holy Rupert and that was the basic for the Bistum (739) and the Erzbistum (798) and got so to the centre of the Bavarian church province. It contains the most of the Bavarian land.

The bishop Eberhard II was a person who belonged to the particular political party, who built up from shires and governorships and laid courts a closed archiepiscopal territory in the year of 1200 until 1246. In 1275 the border between the dukedom of Bavaria and Salzburg were accepted. In 1328 Salzburg became an independent state inside the “holy roman empire”. As an archbishopric it developed to an ecclesiastically mundane buffer state between the Bavarian and the Habsburg lands.

1262 and 1525/26 the farmers began a rebellion. The bishop Leopold Anton Graf von Firmian forced 1731/1732 the emigration of 20 000 inhabitants of Salzburg, who were converted to the Protestantism (Salzburger Exulanten). In the 16th Century the importance of economy were based on the trade with salt and the gold mining in the village of Gastein. The quantity of mining was the biggest in the whole middle Europe.

In 1803 the archbishopric came together with the princedom of the grand duke Ferdinand III and 1805 with Berchtesgaden and so the empire of Habsburg were established. 1810 it came to Bavaria, after the Vienna congress 1816 (without Berchtesgaden and the Rupertiwinkel) to the Austrian state. In 1849 Salzburg became a personal apanage of the king and 1920 a country of the new established Austria.