Hellbrunn Palace

Markus Sittikus von Hohenems built Hellbrunn between 1613 and 1619 as a day villa - there were no bedrooms, because he never intended to stay overnight - and its point was entertainment. The Wasserspiele are a sequence of hydraulic jokes powered entirely by gravity from a spring, unchanged in principle for four hundred years: a stone table where hidden jets soak the seated guests while the host stays dry, grottoes that spray, automata driven by water including a mechanical theatre of some two hundred moving figures showing a whole baroque town, and a crown that rises on a water jet. Guides still trigger them on visitors, which is the whole tradition. The park is open free and contains the glass pavilion from The Sound of Music, moved here from Leopoldskron.

What you actually see

• The trick fountains - gravity-powered jets that soak guests, running since 1619.
• The stone dining table - where the archbishop drenched his seated visitors.
• A water-driven mechanical theatre - some two hundred moving figures in a baroque town.
• The film pavilion - the glass gazebo moved into the park.

When to go

April to October; the water games close for winter. Half a day.

Honest expectations

You will get wet - that is the point, and the guides do not warn you which jets are live. The fountains run only in the warm months. The palace rooms are modest compared with the garden.

Nearby

Salzburg centre is fifteen minutes by bus; the zoo is next door.