During his ten years in Vienna, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived at a number of different addresses. His apartment at Domgasse 5 is said to be “the largest, most elegant and expensive apartment ever occupied by Mozart and the only one that is still intact today.” He lived here with his family for two and a half years, from September 1784 to April 1787. Mozart’s original furniture has been lost, but the apartment has been re-furnished to look very much as it must have looked when he lived there.

Entrance to Domgasse 5

Here he composed numerous chamber music works, eight piano concertos and what is now one of the world’s most popular operas, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), to a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, based on the play by Beaumarchais.

Sign at the entrance

This sign at the entrance identifies the house rather strangely as “Mozart Haus Vienna”, with the word Haus in German and “Vienna” in English.

Illustration in the entrance hall

As a child prodigy and as an adult, Mozart spent about a third of his life on the road, about twelve years out of thirty-five, giving concerts and trying to get jobs as a musician or resident composer. He traveled in horse-drawn coaches, as that was the only means of transportation available. There were no paved roads, so this sort of travel was bumpy and dusty, and very slow. It was also dangerous. As a precaution, his father Leopold always carried a pistol and a knife with him, but he never had to use them. Mozart’s journeys are documented on various websites, for instance https://www.mozartways.com/.

Stairwell of Domgasse 5

Photography is not allowed in the apartment itself, for whatever reason.

Website: www.mozarthausvienna.at/en/

My photos in this post are from 2016. I revised the text in 2018.

See more posts on the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).