Salzburg
Austria


The Experience

Comprising three medieval townhouses located steps from Mozart's birthplace in the cobble-carpeted and attraction-packed Baroque Alt Stadt, this former coaching inn is a Salzburg institution that has hosted everyone from Picasso to Queen Elizabeth. It's hard to beat the location on Getreidegasse, the main pedestrian-only shopping byway, and just steps from Festspielhaus, the festival hall. But history and charm are why people stay. The elegant 14th-century inn, which will celebrate its 600th anniversary in 2007, has remained virtually unchanged through the years; today it oozes with rusticated alpine warmth that's a throwback to its name -- literally "golden stag." Fittingly, antlers and other high-altitude decorations adorn the warren of antediluvian hallways that connect the hotel's vaulted public spaces.

The Rooms

Like the cozy dimensions of its fanciful public areas, all chintz and down-home Austrian decorations, rooms in the three connected row houses that form the heart of the hotel are diminutive and stocked with furniture (avoid fourth-floor dwellings, which feel even tinier due to low ceilings). In fact, they're stocked almost to overflowing, with country fabrics, hand-carved chests, landscape oil paintings, dimly lit wrought-iron lamps and large beds with carved pine headboards. Seventeen other rooms are located in a stand-alone former guildhall across the street known as Kupferschmied Haus -- book one of these, if you prefer more privacy, as you'll rarely come across another guest.

The Service

Austrians have made hospitality a national obsession. So expect obligingly courteous service from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. As one of the country's best hotels, the property is often able to secure tickets to sold-out performances.

The Highlights

One of the hotel's restaurants, Herzl, is located down the street and is perfect for time-honored stomach-filling fare, like Wiener schnitzel and Nürnberger bratwurst. But the better experience is in the hotel's eponymous main restaurant. Chef Hermann Bauer has created an update to traditional Austrian cooking, complemented by a top-notch cellar of elusive Austrian wines, including many that never make it to the U.S. Set in what were once the old stables, the atmospheric restaurant today is the perfect place to wind down the day, dining on fine food and surrounded by history.

-- Farhad Heydari

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