Tanzmeisterhaus Salzburg

• 1. Introduction

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  Inside the Tanzmeisterhaus in Salzburg, the Mozart family gathered regularly to shoot airguns at paper targets. The targets were designed to be funny, and the family gave this pastime a name: Bölzlschiessen. That same building stands on the square now known as Makartplatz. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived there from the age of 17 to 25. His father Leopold used it as the center of his musical and commercial work in the city. The building's name translates as the Dance Master's House, pointing to an earlier family whose connection to Leopold Mozart was personal as well as professional. Its documented history reaches back to 1617, long before any Mozart set foot inside it.

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• 2. The Dancing Masters

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  On the 3rd of August 1711, the court dancing master Johann Lorenz Spöckner received a decree from Salzburg authorities. It permitted him to hold dance lessons for nobles in a house on what was then called Hannibalplatz, preparing them for life at court. By 1713, the local Seelenbeschreibung, a form of civic census, had already recorded the property under the informal name the building still carries.

  Franz Gottlieb Spöckner, born in 1706, bought the house from his mother in 1739 and succeeded his father as court dancing master. On the 21st of November 1747, he stood as best man at the wedding of Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria Pertl. Franz Gottlieb died in 1767. The house had been in the Spöckner family for nearly thirty years. Six years would separate his death from the day Leopold Mozart brought his household there.

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• 3. The Mozarts Move In

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  On Getreidegasse, the house where Wolfgang and his siblings had been born had grown too small. There was no longer enough room for ordinary family life, and Leopold needed space to host the social gatherings that sustained his professional standing. In 1773, the Mozarts moved into a spacious eight-room apartment in the Tanzmeisterhaus.

  The apartment included a large hall that had originally served the dancing master for private lessons. Leopold converted it to multiple purposes. The hall became the location for music lessons, domestic concerts, and a stock of keyboard instruments that Leopold sold. Anna Maria Mozart died in 1778, while her children and husband were still living in the Tanzmeisterhaus apartment.

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• 4. Years of Departure

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  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart left Salzburg for Vienna in 1781, ending eight years at the Tanzmeisterhaus. His sister Nannerl married in 1784, leaving the household as well. Leopold was now the apartment's only long-term occupant, living with his servants in rooms that had once been shared by the full family.

  From 1785 until his death in 1787, Leopold shared the apartment with his infant grandson, Leopold Alois Pantaleon. The child had been entrusted to him by Nannerl, who had moved away from Salzburg after her marriage. When Leopold died in 1787, the Tanzmeisterhaus passed out of the Mozart family's connection for the last time.

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• 5. Bombs and Restoration

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  The Tanzmeisterhaus was two-thirds destroyed by aerial bombs in 1944. The long, simple two- to three-storey building that had sheltered the Spöckner and Mozart families lost most of its structure in the attack. In the surviving section, a restoration effort followed more than a decade later. By 1957, workers had repaired the late 18th-century stucco decoration in the dancing master's hall, completing a project begun in 1956. A Mozart memorial was installed in the hall after the restoration.

  The Tanzmeisterhaus reopened to the public in 1996 as a museum run by the Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, also known as the International Mozarteum Foundation. The collection focuses on Wolfgang's years of residence from 1773 to 1781, bringing together musical instruments and historical documents from that period. The building stands at Makartplatz 8 under the protection of the Austrian Federal Monuments Office. The most recent addition to the museum is the Zauberflötenhäuschen, a small wooden structure relocated here in 2022. It is said to be the building in which Mozart composed The Magic Flute.

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