Historic Centre of the City of Salzburg

The Historic Centre of the City of Salzburg, also known as the Altstadt, is a district of Salzburg, Austria, recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. It corresponds with the historic city center, situated on the left and right banks of the Salzach river.

The listing of the World Heritage Site describes it thus: "Salzburg has managed to preserve an extraordinarily rich urban fabric, developed over the period from the Middle Ages to the 19th century when it was a city-state ruled by a prince-archbishop.

Its Flamboyant Gothic art attracted many craftsmen and artists before the city became even better known through the work of the Italian architects Vincenzo Scamozzi and Santini Solari, to whom the centre of Salzburg owes much of its Baroque appearance.

This meeting-point of northern and southern Europe perhaps sparked the genius of Salzburg's most famous son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose name has been associated with the city ever since." The listed area comprises a core zone of 236 hectares (580 acres), including the old city on both banks of the Salzach river together with the Mönchsberg, Festungsberg and Kapuzinerberg hills that surround the old city to west and east.

Beyond the core zone there is a buffer zone of 467 hectares (1,150 acres) which is intended to protect the core zone being affected by development visible in long distance views.