Welcome to
the Salzburg Festival Archive

The Salzburg Festival’s Archive is among the most important theatre archives existing in Austria. As an archive, collection and library hybrid, it preserves a vast trove of documentation of the Festival’s history. Its holdings are continuously expanded and catalogued with great care and attention to detail. Artistic projects involving the archive seek to convey this cultural heritage in a vibrant manner.

Salzburg Festival 2018 Salome Opera Asmik Grigorian

Programme Archive

When did Anne-Sophie Mutter or Asmik Grigorian give their Salzburg Festival debuts? How often did Herbert von Karajan conduct Verdi’s Messa da Requiem? And who was actually the first female conductor in Salzburg? Our programme archive holds the answers to all these questions.

Programme Archive

Online Catalogue

The first lots of the Archive’s diverse holdings will soon be made available online via a catalogue. Photographs, publications, sketches, posters and various documents are currently being captured by the Archive’s staff, indexed by keywords, and entered into a catalogue using archival software. Digital searches are already possible internally; during the summer of 2025, the catalogue will be made available online via the Salzburg Festival website.

Publication in summer 2025

Salzburg Festival 1920 Jedermann at the cathedral square

History

The Salzburg Festival was born on 22 August 1920, when Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s morality play Jedermann was first performed on Cathedral Square, directed by Max Reinhardt. Since then, the Salzburg Festival has established itself as the most important festival for opera, drama and concerts.

Timeline

News

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Residency at the Salzburg Festival Archive: Iz Paehr

Iz Paehr works in Berlin with and on virtual structures. For 2025, Iz Paehr was awarded the residency of the S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Residencies Programme at the Salzburg Festival Archive, implemented in cooperation with Ars Electronica as a dissemination partner. In their work entitled Feeling Virtual: An Archive of Touch, Iz Paehr aims to activate obstructed knowledge derived from experience and the senses, developing virtual interfaces enabling multi-sensorial access to materials from the Salzburg Festival Archive.

Iz Paehr

Memory Office

The “Festival Memory Office” of the Swiss artist Mats Staub gives the Festival’s visitors their say. In interviews, they discuss their most beautiful and moving, but also irritating Festival experiences. Festival visitors born between 1975 and 2005 who wish to participate are cordially invited to register here. Please note that the questionnaire is only available in German.

Participate in the “Festival Memory Office”

Cultural Heritage Online

During the summer of 2024, the Salzburg Festival received funding approval for its grant application to the EU and the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Public Services and Sports for the project “Kulturerbe digital” (Digital Cultural Heritage). Currently, all programme books, posters and costume sketches since 1920 are being digitized. Furthermore, 3D scans of costumes and props are being created for four selected productions.

Digital Cultural Heritage

Gusti Adler’s Estate

One of three important estates newly incorporated into the Archive’s holdings is that of Gusti Adler. She was not only the closest collaborator of the director and Festival co-founder Max Reinhardt for 20 years, later becoming his biographer too, but also a close childhood friend of Helene Thimig, the incomparable actress, director and wife of Max Reinhardt.

Gusti Adler’s Estate

Max Reinhardt „Memory of the World“

Max Reinhardt’s prompt book for performances of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermannwas included in the national Austrian register of documentary heritage, “Memory of Austria”

Opening Hours

We look forward to your visit to our Archive premises and the permanent exhibition on 100 years of Festival history. You can visit us anytime during our opening hours without registering in advance.

Opening hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays
from 10 am to 4 pm
(except on public holidays, in September and during the Christmas break).

Visits by groups and individuals can also be arranged at other times; please register in advance.

Registration: archiv@salzburgfestival.at

Guided Tours for Groups

Starting in April 2025, we offer a combined guided tour with the public tour of the Festival theatres on every first Thursday of the month.

Private group tours for up to 20 persons can be arranged upon request. The flat fee is 120 Euros per group. The fee will be waived for educational institutions such as school classes, university institutes, for sponsors and groups of members of the Association of Friends and Supporters of the Salzburg Festival.

Enquire about a private group tour