Mozarthaus Vienna

Mozart moved a great deal - some thirteen addresses in Vienna in ten years - and Domgasse 5 is the only one of his apartments that survives. He lived here from 1784 to 1787, in what was by his standards a large and expensive flat, and it was the most successful period of his life: the Haydn quartets, several piano concertos and The Marriage of Figaro were written in these rooms, which is why the building was long called the Figarohaus. The museum has four floors, three of them exhibition: the apartment itself on the first, with the original room layout, and two further floors covering Mozart's Vienna, the city's musical economy, his finances, freemasonry and the operas. There is very little original furniture - what you get is the space and the context rather than objects he touched.

History

The house at Domgasse 5 was built in the 17th century with two floors and rebuilt in 1716, and when Mozart rented rooms here in 1784 it was known as the Camesina House, after the family who had owned it since 1720; the entrance he used, on Schulerstraße, was later walled up for a shop. His rooms opened to the public in 1941, the Vienna Museum ran the exhibition from 1945, and in 2004 the city's Wien Holding renovated the whole building, reopening it in time for the Mozart Year of 2006, the 250th anniversary of his birth (Wikipedia, Mozarthaus Vienna).

The main sights

• His only surviving Vienna flat - lived in from 1784 to 1787, the best years.
• Where Figaro was written - along with the Haydn quartets and concertos.
• Two floors of context - Mozart's Vienna, his money, his freemasonry, the operas.
• The original room plan - the apartment layout as he rented it.

When to go

All year. Two hours.

Things to know

Almost nothing in the apartment is his - expect context, not relics. It is small and crowded in season. The audio guide is essentially necessary to make sense of the display.

Nearby

Stephansdom is round the corner; the Graben and the Hofburg are close.

Key facts