The Audience Hall

This is the very centre of the demonstration of power, the setting for the expression of absolutist rule and the greatness of the spiritual and secular princes of Salzburg. Grand architecture, painting, richly decorated rooms, costly textiles and splendid tableware were all means of displaying archiepiscopal prestige. They also served to ensure the status and the glory intended to distinguish the Salzburg court from the other major courts in the Holy Roman Empire.

This had to be borne in clearly and unequivocally upon those who had by dint of their importance penetrated this far. Johann Michael Rottmayr's ceiling fresco The Romans pay tribute to Alexander sets the tone: this is the appropriate comportment before the ruler. Anyone admitted here must kneel in maximum deference.

The rare and costly tapestry (c 1600) from the era of Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau is a Brussels Gobelin, woven from wool, silk, and gold and silver thread. Wolf Dietrich ordered several  entire series of these tapestries, to be hung in almost every room in the Residenz.

The Louis XVI seating was purchased for this room in 1775, from the Paris atelier of Henri Jacob; it is the only complete set in the world from this workshop. The floor, of different woods (oak, maple and walnut), laid by Salzburg craftsmen in 1714, is the oldest surviving wooden floor in the Residenz. The baroque astronomical land-case clock by Jakob Pentele has also been preserved; it shows minutes, hours, days, weeks, seasons and phases of the moon, and has an integrated glockenspiel with four melodies.

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