Rita Charbonnier - author of MOZART'S SISTER - Official Site

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in this building on 27 January 1756 (to enlarge this photo, and all the following photos, just click on them). It is in Austria, in Salzburg, in a street that is today called Getreidegasse, at number 9. Four and a half years previously, on 30 July 1751, in the same house and probably in the same bed, the Maestro’s sister was born: Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia “Nannerl” Mozart. Who knows what they would both think today seeing their family name written in huge letters on the façade of a building which is, after all, nothing special.

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And who knows what he would think, seeing his face stamped on a brand of chocolate.

Markuszhang @ Wikimedia Commons

But I digress. Outside the building a plaque recalls to passers-by the illustrious personage who was born there...

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...and inside the apartment every precious corner is kept with the utmost care. This is the kitchen – in which various scenes from Mozart’s Sister take place.

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And this is a corner of the music room. When I visited Salzburg, I found it thrilling to wander around these rooms. I remember standing for a full ten minutes looking at a door handle, thinking that “they” would have touched it. I recall having tears in my eyes and finding the museum attendant looking at me with a certain perplexity. And yet, I love to think that old places preserve a scintilla of the humanity of those who have lived there before, and that we can feel it.

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In 1773, the Mozart family moved to a bigger and more elegant apartment, on the square that is today called Makartplatz.

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During the second world war it was half destroyed by a bomb. In the gaping hole that was left, a new building was erected that was completely out of context, rising up like an absurd turret. It was used as office space. But the International Mozarteum Foundation, that preserves and fosters the heritage of Mozart, managed to find the necessary funds to demolish the turret and reconstruct the building as it was before the bomb, at least from the outside. No one knows how the rooms were laid out originally; an approximate solution was found. I should say that in this case, walking through the apartment, I felt no ‘scintilla’. The horror of war must have dispersed them.

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Another building that retained Mozartian traces was the one in which Nannerl lived in the last years of her life. This one has not however been made into a museum. A plaque on the outside wall states that Mozart’s sister went to live there in 1801, when she was widowed, and died there on 29 October 1829. To read the plaque, in German, just click on the photo.

Photo Luigi Verini

On the other side of the building, there is... a beer-house.

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And lastly, this is the tomb belonging to Mozart’s sister and Franz Joseph Haydn’s brother, whose name was Michael and who was also a composer. Isn’t it strange that Mozart’s sister and Haydn’s brother should be buried next to one another?