By Catherine Hickley
Reporting from Salzburg, Austria
Sept. 19, 2026
Although “The Sound of Music” draws thousands of tourists every year to Salzburg, the movie has never been one of the city’s favorite things.
For decades, many residents didn’t even know about the blockbuster musical that put their city on the map for global audiences. Those who did often dismissed it as kitsch.
A new museum, founded by the city government and opening Sunday, aims to bridge the gap between the musical and the true story of the von Trapps, a Salzburg family who became a successful singing group and fled Austria after it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.
“We want to attract a local public as well as tourists,” said Matthias Bergsmann, the curator of the Sound of Music Museum. “The local population might find the real story more interesting, while many fans of the musical are not even aware that there was a real family. We have to appeal to both groups.”
The museum is housed in the former coach-house and hunters’ lodge of a Baroque palace on Salzburg’s outskirts.
The ground floor is devoted to the genesis of “The Sound of Music” and its reception. The story begins with Maria von Trapp’s 1949 autobiography, which inspired a German-language film; then, in 1959, comes the hit Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, which the director Robert Wise turned into film history.
A listening post carries a radio interview that Julie Andrews, who plays Maria in the movie, gave during the shoot, bemoaning the “awful” Salzburg weather but praising actors playing the von Trapp children as “enchanting.” (Andrews, 90, declined an invitation to the opening, but Bergsmann said she had sent a greeting to be read out at the ceremony.)
The global phenomenon “The Sound of Music” became is celebrated in a pink room called “My Favorite Things,” with posters, records, photos and some seriously kitschy souvenirs that the museum acquired from Roger Pluijm, a fanatical Dutch collector. There is also a recreation of the gazebo where Liesl von Trapp, played by Charmian Carr, sings “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” in the movie.
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Roger Pluijm, a collector of “The Sound of Music” memorabilia, in the museum’s “My Favorite Things” gallery. Credit...Skander Khlif for The New York Times
Upstairs in the museum, the focus turns to the real von Trapps.
Georg von Trapp, a submarine commander in the Austro-Hungarian navy, had seven children with his first wife, Agathe Whitehead. In 1927, after her death, he married the children’s governess, Maria Kutschera. With the help of the family chaplain, the von Trapps formed a choir.
Georg opposed Nazism and refused to fly the swastika flag after Austria was annexed. He emigrated with his family soon afterward — though they did not flee on foot over mountains to Switzerland, as shown in the movie. (That would have been a 150-mile hike.) Instead, they took the train to Italy and later settled in the United States, where they continued performing Austrian folk songs until 1957.
Today, the family runs an Alpine-style lodge and resort in Vermont. One of Georg’s granddaughters, Elisabeth von Trapp, still gives summer walking tours of Salzburg.
The museum aims to bridge the gap between the musical and the true story of the von Trapp family.Credit...Skander Khlif for The New York Times
Each year, 300,000 to 350,000 visitors come to Salzburg primarily because of “The Sound of Music,” according to city estimates. They arrive from North and South America, Britain, Australia and, in growing numbers, from China, South Korea and India.
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Several tour buses a day drive them to film locations around the city, and to a church in the nearby town of Mondsee, where the wedding of Maria and Georg was shot. (Salzburg churches would not allow the crew to put up scaffolding.) Back in town, many tours take in the Mirabell Gardens, where Maria and the children tore around while singing “Do-Re-Mi.”
On a recent coach tour, Gayle Hice, a retired primary school art teacher from North Carolina who was on vacation in Europe, said that seeing Salzburg and the movie’s locations “was a big thing on my wish list.” She remembered her mother taking her to watch the film when she was 7 or 8. She couldn’t guess how many times she’s seen it since. “Maybe 50?” Hice said, shrugging.
Bergsmann said he hoped that the tours would include the museum and was in discussion with the operators. But he might have to work a little harder to draw locals.
A television documentary that aired in Austria last year during the movie’s 60th anniversary explored the history of filming “The Sound of Music,” including how the city authorities resisted the crew’s requests to realistically recreate the 1938 annexation with Nazi insignia and marching troops. The documentary also looked back on the movie’s release, when it was a box-office flop in Austria and Germany.
“The reception in German-speaking areas was very different from in the U.S.,” Bergsmann said. “But it was only 20 years after the end of World War II, and perhaps many Austrians weren’t ready to see that in images. The wounds were still too raw, and the work of processing all that had happened was just beginning.”
The museum tracks Salzburg’s growing acceptance of “The Sound of Music” with footage from two theater productions in the city. Salzburg’s puppet theater paved the way with a production based on the musical that has been in its repertoire since 2008. The Salzburg State Theater followed in 2011, and has kept the musical in its repertoire ever since.
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Matthias Bergsmann, the museum’s curator, said he hoped the collection would appeal to both foreign tourists and locals.Credit...Skander Khlif for The New York Times
Carl Philip von Maldeghem, the Salzburg State Theater’s director, said he had first encountered the film at age 17 during a high-school exchange visit to Iowa. When he initially proposed putting on a German-language production at the theater in 2009, the general response was, “‘It will never work,’” he said.
He commissioned the show despite the naysayers, and thought it might run for one season. But, he said, he changed his mind when 300 children turned up for auditions — and most of them already knew the songs.
“It’s the young generation in Salzburg who discovered it,” he said. “The mood has completely shifted.”
According to the theater, about 120,000 people, mostly from the Salzburg region, have seen the production over the past 15 years. Perhaps one day the musical will be as beloved there as whiskers on kittens and crisp apple strudels.

We visited this Basilica in Mondsee
Basilika Mondsee – Wikipedia

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