Best Things to Do in Salzburg (2026 Guide)

Salzburg’s Old Town occupies both banks of the Salzach River but is most densely layered on the left bank, where narrow lanes press between buildings that have been rebuilt, repurposed, and accumulated over nine centuries of archbishopric rule. The yellow and ochre facades suggest Italian influence brought north through the Alps by architects who shaped the city during its baroque renovation in the seventeenth century.

The historic core holds the Cathedral, Residence Palace, Franciscan Church, and the interconnected plazas—Residenzplatz, Domplatz, and Kapitelplatz—that form the civic and religious heart of the city. Getreidegasse, the main commercial street of the Old Town, retains its wrought-iron guild signs above the shop fronts in a tradition dating to the medieval period. Mozart’s birthplace stands along this street. The catacombs cut into the Mönchsberg cliff face on the western edge of the Old Town are among the less-visited but genuinely old parts of the district.

The Old Town is compact enough to walk thoroughly in a full day, though its layers reward slower exploration. Early mornings before ten give access to the main plazas without the midday crowds. The UNESCO World Heritage designation applies to the entire historic center, and the density of protected buildings means the streetscape has changed relatively little in form, if not in commercial use.

Salzburg’s identity as a city rests almost entirely on the concentration of history and music within this small area. Its status as Mozart’s birthplace and the setting associated with The Sound of Music draws visitors from around the world, but the urban fabric itself—the courts, passages, and cliff-backed streets—has a physical logic that would be worth visiting regardless of those associations.

Salzburg Cathedral stands at the center of the Old Town where three plazas converge—Domplatz, Residenzplatz, and Kapitelplatz—giving it a civic prominence that matches its architectural scale. The current building was consecrated in 1628 after the previous Romanesque cathedral burned, and it became one of the first large baroque churches built north of the Alps, influencing ecclesiastical architecture across the region for decades.

The interior is organized around a central nave of considerable length and height, with side chapels lining both walls and an elaborate organ above the entrance. The font near the entrance dates from the twelfth century and was used for Mozart’s baptism in 1756, a detail recorded in the cathedral’s registers. The excavations beneath the cathedral, accessible through the Dom Museum, reveal foundations and artifacts from the successive structures built on this site since the eighth century. The Dom Museum itself houses the cathedral treasury and a collection of art spanning the history of the archdiocese.

The cathedral is free to enter and open daily; the museum and excavations require a ticket. The building is an active place of worship and hosts regular services, including a Sunday high mass with full choir and organ that draws both worshippers and visitors. The Domplatz in front serves as an outdoor performance venue during the Salzburg Festival each summer, with the cathedral facade as backdrop.

As the seat of the Prince-Archbishops who ruled Salzburg for centuries, the cathedral occupies the intersection of religious authority and political power in the city’s history. Its scale and position in the urban layout were deliberate expressions of that authority, making it not just the largest building in the Old Town but the pivot around which the baroque city was organized.

Getreidegasse has carried goods and shoppers through Salzburg’s left-bank old town since the medieval period, its narrow canyon of tall buildings leaning close enough overhead to cool the street in summer and concentrate the sounds of the city into a particular urban intimacy. The hanging iron guild signs that project from the facades—each one a custom-made wrought-iron announcement of the trade within—remain one of the most distinctive decorative features of any European commercial street.

At number nine stands the Mozart Birthplace, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 and where his family lived until 1773. The apartment is now a museum displaying instruments, family portraits, and documents from the composer’s early years. Beyond the birthplace, the street continues through a mix of international shops, traditional Salzburg businesses, and cafés occupying the ground floors of houses whose upper stories date to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Passages cut through the buildings connect Getreidegasse to parallel streets, a feature of old Salzburg’s urban structure that rewards exploration.

The street is busiest between ten in the morning and the early evening, with summer afternoons bringing the heaviest foot traffic. Early mornings offer the cleanest views of the facades and iron signs before the crowds gather. A full walk from one end to the other takes fifteen minutes, though most visitors spend considerably longer.

Getreidegasse is embedded in Salzburg’s UNESCO World Heritage old town, a district whose medieval street plan has survived largely intact. Among the old town’s pedestrian streets, it carries the heaviest concentration of historical significance and the strongest sense of a commercial street that has operated continuously for centuries.

Archbishop Marcus Sitticus built Hellbrunn as a summer retreat in the early seventeenth century, and his idea of entertainment left a very specific legacy: a network of trick fountains hidden in the garden stonework, designed to drench unsuspecting guests at the pull of a lever. The archbishop watched from a dry throne while everyone else got soaked.

The trick water features are the defining attraction—stone dining tables with hidden jets, pathways that spray from unexpected angles, mechanical figures that animate when water flows through them. The Neptune Grotto and the mechanical theatre are among the more elaborate set pieces in the garden, which also contains a small zoo established in the eighteenth century, one of the oldest in Europe. The palace interior, though less visited than the grounds, has well-preserved frescoed rooms open on guided tours included with admission.

Hellbrunn is busiest on warm summer afternoons when the water features are most appealing; morning visits tend to be quieter. The full garden circuit with trick fountain tour takes roughly ninety minutes, and the experience is particularly suited to families. The site is open seasonally, generally from April through October, though the park grounds themselves remain accessible year-round.

Located about four kilometers south of Salzburg’s Old Town, Hellbrunn offers a counterpoint to the city’s more solemn historic sites. It represents a baroque sensibility less interested in piety or power than in pleasure and surprise—a reminder that the archbishop’s lifestyle included elaborate jokes played on his guests as a form of hospitality.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived at the house on Makartplatz from 1773 to 1780, the years spanning his adolescence and early adulthood, a period when he composed prolifically while navigating the increasingly difficult relationship with his employer, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. The building, rebuilt after Second World War bomb damage and reopened as a museum in 1996, presents this chapter of Mozart’s life through original instruments, family portraits, and documentary material that the more famous birthplace house on Getreidegasse cannot accommodate.

The museum’s collection includes a fortepiano and a violin associated with the family, letters in Mozart’s hand, and room reconstructions that draw on period accounts of how the Mozart household operated. A significant portion of the exhibition focuses on Leopold Mozart, whose role as his son’s teacher and manager shaped the composer’s entire development. The presentation is scholarly without being dry, and the relative quietness of the site compared to the Getreidegasse house allows for more considered engagement with the material.

The Mozart Residence is open daily and can be visited in combination with the birthplace house on a single ticket. Allowing around ninety minutes covers the exhibition thoroughly. The location on Makartplatz, near the Mirabell Gardens and the pedestrian bridge over the Salzach, places it conveniently within the right bank’s main sightseeing circuit.

Among Salzburg’s several Mozart sites, the residence on Makartplatz occupies a middle position—less iconic than the Getreidegasse birthplace, more substantive in its exhibition depth. For visitors with a genuine interest in Mozart’s biography rather than simply his fame, it offers the richer encounter with the composer’s actual life in Salzburg.

Founded in 696 AD by Saint Rupert, St. Peter’s Abbey stands at the foot of the Mönchsberg cliff in the heart of Salzburg’s old town, making it one of the oldest continuously operating monasteries in the German-speaking world. The catacombs carved into the cliff face directly behind the abbey church date to even earlier centuries, and the combination of rock-cut chambers, Romanesque foundations, and Baroque overlays gives the site a density of historical layers that rewards careful attention.

The abbey church itself is predominantly Baroque, its interior distinguished by elaborate stucco work, a richly decorated high altar, and side chapels with notable paintings. The adjacent cemetery is one of the most visited in Austria—its grave markers and family tombs set against the sheer Mönchsberg wall, with greenery growing from the cliff face above. Arcaded galleries line the cemetery walls, and iron grave crosses and carved stone markers span several centuries. The catacombs above the cemetery can be entered on guided tours and contain rock-cut chapels used since early Christian times.

The abbey and cemetery are open to visitors throughout the year with no admission to the main areas, though the catacombs require a small fee. Early morning, before tour groups arrive, offers the most peaceful experience of both the church and the cemetery. Combining St. Peter’s with the Hohensalzburg Fortress above—accessible via a path from the Mönchsberg—makes an efficient use of a morning.

St. Peter’s occupies a position at the very origin point of Salzburg as a city. The monastery was the institutional anchor around which the settlement grew, and its survival as a working religious community through thirteen centuries of turbulent European history gives it an authenticity that purely museum-like heritage sites cannot replicate.

The Alter Markt in Salzburg’s left-bank old town has functioned as a commercial and civic center since the medieval period, its current form reflecting centuries of incremental building around a space that once hosted markets, public announcements, and the daily transactions of a salt-trading city. The square retains a compressed, intimate quality—surrounded by facades of varying periods and scales—that distinguishes it from the more theatrical baroque squares elsewhere in the old town.

A central feature of the square is the eighteenth-century fountain, topped by a figure of Saint Florian, which has served as a public gathering point and landmark for the surrounding streets. The square is bordered by historic buildings whose ground floors now contain Salzburg’s oldest pharmacy, traditional confectionery shops, and small cafés. The proximity to the Getreidegasse and the Residenzplatz places the Alter Markt within the densest part of the old town’s pedestrian area, making it a natural pause point in any walk through the historic center.

Morning hours on weekdays see the square at its most local, with residents cutting through on their way to shops and cafés before the tourist flow intensifies through the afternoon. The square is pleasant in any season, though the Christmas period brings a market that occupies the space through December. No admission is required and the square is accessible at all hours.

The Alter Markt represents the commercial and civic heart of old Salzburg as distinct from its ecclesiastical center around the Cathedral and the Dom. In a city whose architectural identity is dominated by religious and aristocratic buildings, the square offers a more quotidian register—the everyday city that existed alongside the episcopal grandeur for which Salzburg is better known.

At the center of Mozartplatz stands a bronze statue of the city’s most famous son, unveiled in 1842, while the square itself opens onto one of Salzburg’s most harmonious baroque ensembles — ornate facades, distant fortress views, and the constant murmur of a city that has never stopped trading on Mozart’s legacy. The square sits just east of the Residenzplatz and connects naturally to the broader pedestrian network of the old town.

The Salzburg Tourist Information office occupies a building on the square, making it a practical starting point for first-time visitors. The statue itself, created by Ludwig Schwanthaler, depicts Mozart in formal dress rather than the romanticized composer of popular imagination, giving it a grounded, civic quality. The surrounding architecture reflects the ecclesiastical and aristocratic wealth that shaped Salzburg across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The square is liveliest in summer when outdoor seating extends from nearby cafes and festival visitors fill the old town. Early mornings offer the square in relative quiet, the light falling across the facades without the competing movement of tour groups. A visit requires only minutes as a destination in itself, but Mozartplatz works best as part of a broader old-town walk taking in the Residenzplatz, the Dom, and the Getreidegasse.

Salzburg’s relationship with Mozart has defined its international identity for nearly two centuries, and Mozartplatz is the most literal expression of that civic pride. The square is neither the grandest space in the city nor the most architecturally complex, but its role as a gathering point and orientation landmark gives it a social weight that purely monumental sites rarely achieve.

A short ride in the Mönchsberg Lift delivers passengers from the narrow Gstättengasse in Salzburg’s old town to the wooded plateau above, where the city’s medieval fortifications give way to forested walking paths and panoramic terraces. The lift has served residents and visitors since the early twentieth century, functioning as both practical transport and an effortless entry point to elevated Salzburg.

At the top, the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg occupies a striking contemporary building on the plateau edge, while the rocky paths lead toward Café Winkler and viewpoints looking across the rooftops toward the Hohensalzburg Fortress and the Alps beyond. The Mönchsberg’s sandstone cliffs have been carved and reinforced over centuries, and sections of the old city wall remain visible along the plateau rim. The lift ride itself takes under a minute but the transition from urban street to hilltop calm is immediate.

The lift operates daily and is particularly rewarding in the early evening when the light across the city turns warm. Crowds are lighter than on the fortress side of the hill, making the Mönchsberg plateau a quieter alternative for those wanting elevation without the main tourist flow. Comfortable shoes are worthwhile if planning to walk the full length of the ridge.

Within Salzburg’s layered topography, the Mönchsberg provides essential counterpoint to the flat baroque cityscape below. The hill has shaped the city’s form for centuries, acting as a natural western boundary and providing the sandstone that built many of Salzburg’s historic buildings. Taking the lift situates visitors within that geological and urban relationship in a way that no street-level stroll quite manages.

Perched on the edge of the Mönchsberg cliff above Salzburg’s old town, the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg occupies a purpose-built contemporary structure whose terrace offers one of the city’s most dramatic views — the fortress on its opposite hill, the baroque domes below, and the Alps framing the horizon. The museum opened in 2004 and has established itself as the primary venue in the region for international modern and contemporary art.

The collection and exhibition program span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with particular emphasis on Austrian artists alongside international figures. The building’s design integrates into the cliff face, with interior galleries arranged across multiple levels connected by open staircases. Rotating temporary exhibitions occupy significant portions of the space and change several times per year, while the permanent collection provides continuity between them. The Café M on the terrace level is a destination in its own right for the view alone.

The museum is reachable via the Mönchsberg Lift from Gstättengasse in the old town, making the ascent part of the experience. It is open most days of the week with extended evening hours on selected days. A combined ticket with the Rupertinum, the museum’s second venue in the old town, offers better value for visitors with broad interests. Crowds are lighter here than at the main Salzburg baroque sites, giving the galleries a calmer atmosphere.

The Museum of Modern Art Salzburg represents a deliberate counterpoint to the city’s dominant baroque and classical identity. Placing a contemporary art institution on the Mönchsberg — the same hill that defines Salzburg’s medieval skyline — signals that the city’s cultural ambitions extend beyond its Festival and its eighteenth-century heritage into the contested and open-ended terrain of contemporary artistic practice.

The Grosses Festspielhaus occupies a site carved directly into the Mönchsberg rock face, its stage — one of the widest in the world — capable of accommodating the largest operatic productions in the Salzburg Festival repertoire. Completed in 1960 to designs by Clemens Holzmeister, the building replaced earlier festival structures and represents a deliberate act of architectural permanence for a festival that had outgrown its original venues.

The auditorium seats nearly 2,200 people and the stage machinery allows for elaborate scenic transformations that define the visual ambition of major Salzburg Festival productions. The building’s facade on Hofstallgasse, incorporating the historic court stables into its structure, presents a long horizontal frontage that belies the scale of the interior carved behind it. Guided tours of the building are available outside the festival season and reveal the technical infrastructure that makes large-scale opera production possible.

During the Salzburg Festival in July and August, performances are in high demand and tickets require advance planning — often months ahead for major productions. Outside the festival season, guided tours typically run on weekday mornings and are the primary means of access. The surrounding Hofstallgasse and the adjacent Felsenreitschule — another festival venue carved from the rock — can be visited as part of the same circuit.

The Grosses Festspielhaus embodies the Salzburg Festival’s ambition to present opera and drama at the highest level of production scale. Within a city of baroque intimacy, the sheer size of the building and its stage represents a different register of cultural aspiration — one oriented toward spectacle rather than the chamber music and recital traditions that also define Salzburg’s musical identity.

Schloss Leopoldskron sits at the edge of a small lake on the southern outskirts of Salzburg, its baroque facade reflected in still water with the Festungsberg and Hohensalzburg visible above the treetops behind it. Archbishop Leopold Anton von Firmian built the palace in the 1730s; Max Reinhardt, the theater director who co-founded the Salzburg Festival, acquired it in 1918 and made it the intellectual and social center of the Festival’s early decades until he was forced to flee in 1938.

The palace now operates as a conference and seminar center for the Salzburg Global Seminar, an international organization that has met here since 1947. The interior retains significant historic furnishings and decorative elements from both the baroque period and the Reinhardt era. The building and grounds were used as a filming location for The Sound of Music, representing the von Trapp family home in exterior shots. This connection draws considerable visitor interest, though access to the interior is limited to conference guests and guided tours offered on selected dates.

The exterior and lake reflection are visible from the public path along the lakeshore without entering the palace grounds. Guided tours, when scheduled, provide the only way to see the interior; checking availability in advance with the Salzburg Global Seminar is necessary. The surrounding neighborhood offers a quiet contrast to the Old Town a short distance to the north.

Leopoldskron represents a specific strand in Salzburg’s cultural history—the one shaped by the Festival, by the international artistic community that gathered around Reinhardt, and by the forced displacement of that community in 1938. The Salzburg Global Seminar’s continuation of the palace’s role as a meeting place for international exchange carries that history forward in a form that is less visible but continuous with what came before.

The Salzburg Marionette Theater has been performing at its home on Schwarzstrasse since 1913, making it one of the longest-running puppet theaters in the world. What distinguishes this institution from a simple children’s attraction is the scale and seriousness of its ambition — the company stages full-length opera productions, including works by Mozart, Offenbach, and Strauss, using hand-crafted marionettes of exceptional artistry and recordings from the world’s leading opera companies.

The marionettes themselves are works of considerable craft, averaging around 50 to 60 centimetres in height and operated by skilled puppeteers who bring them to life with nuanced movement. Productions of The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni are repertoire staples, and the staging — with its miniature sets, lighting design, and synchronized movement — achieves a theatrical atmosphere that engages audiences well beyond the novelty of the medium. The theater seats around 350 people in an intimate auditorium where every seat offers a clear view of the stage.

The season runs from spring through autumn, with a special Christmas program during the winter festival period. Booking in advance is strongly recommended, particularly for summer performances when Salzburg is busy with the Festival. The theater is within easy walking distance of the Old Town and the Salzach riverfront, making it a natural evening programme during a stay in the city.

The Salzburg Marionette Theater rewards visitors who approach it with an open mind — it is a serious cultural institution that happens to use puppets, and its productions frequently achieve a quality that surprises those expecting something more straightforwardly folksy.

Housed in a historic building on Residenzplatz in central Salzburg, the Panorama Museum presents one of the most remarkable artistic artefacts in the city: the Salzburg Panorama of 1829, a large-scale circular painting depicting the city and its surrounding landscape as it appeared in the early nineteenth century. Painted by Johann Michael Sattler over a period of several years, the panorama stretches some 26 metres in circumference and provides an extraordinarily detailed visual record of Salzburg at a pivotal moment in its history.

The painting is displayed in the rotunda for which it was originally created, allowing visitors to stand at the centre and turn through 360 degrees to take in the full sweep of the image. The level of detail in the townscape, the surrounding mountains and the countryside beyond the city is exceptional, and the comparison with the modern view — much of which remains recognisably similar — is a rewarding exercise. The museum also holds collections of prints, drawings and other panoramic works that provide context for this distinctive nineteenth-century art form.

The Panorama Museum is open year-round and is accessible with the Salzburg Museum day ticket, which also covers the main Salzburg Museum on Mozartplatz. The combination of the two provides a thorough grounding in the city’s history and visual culture. The museum is particularly suitable for visitors with an interest in urban history or the art of the pre-photographic era.

For anyone seeking to understand Salzburg’s visual heritage and its long history as a subject of artistic representation, the Panorama Museum offers an experience that is genuinely unique. The Sattler panorama is an irreplaceable document of the city’s past and a remarkable technical achievement that continues to impress visitors nearly two centuries after its creation.

Housed within the historic Residenz palace complex on Salzburg’s celebrated Residenzplatz, the Residenzgalerie is one of Austria’s finest collections of European paintings. Established in the eighteenth century and occupying the ceremonial rooms of the former archbishops’ residence, the gallery presents works spanning the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, with particular strengths in Dutch and Flemish masters, Italian baroque painting and Austrian art of the imperial period.

The collection includes significant works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Brueghel, and a range of Italian painters whose canvases fill rooms that retain their original decorative character, including ornate stucco ceilings and period furnishings. This combination of great paintings displayed in historically authentic surroundings creates an experience quite different from that of a purpose-built museum. The rooms themselves are part of the attraction, and the sense of encountering art in the context for which much of it was originally collected is genuinely affecting.

The Residenzgalerie is open year-round and makes an excellent complement to the Residenz State Rooms that occupy the same building. A combined ticket covers both sections, allowing visitors to move between the art collection and the ceremonial apartments in a single visit. The gallery is particularly appealing on days when outdoor sightseeing is limited by rain or cold, providing a cultured and comfortable indoor alternative.

Located at the very heart of Salzburg’s baroque old city, the Residenzgalerie is surrounded by the cathedral, the Domplatz and the Mozartplatz, placing it within easy reach of the city’s other major attractions. For those with a genuine interest in European painting, it stands among the most significant and rewarding galleries in the Alpine region.

Occupying the Neue Residenz on Mozartplatz at the very centre of Salzburg’s baroque old city, the Salzburg Museum is the leading institution for the history and culture of Salzburg and its region. Founded in the nineteenth century and comprehensively redeveloped in the early 2000s, the museum presents its collections across multiple floors through a combination of permanent galleries and rotating temporary exhibitions, addressing the city’s art, history and urban development from Roman times to the present.

The permanent galleries cover Salzburg’s history as a prince-archbishopric, its place in the development of baroque culture, its significance in the history of music and its transformation into a modern city during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collections include paintings, decorative arts, historical documents and everyday objects that together build a layered picture of the city across many centuries. The temporary exhibition programme regularly addresses themes in Austrian and European cultural history, bringing fresh perspectives to the museum’s broad scope.

The Salzburg Museum is open throughout the year and is included in the Salzburg Museum day ticket alongside the Panorama Museum and the Festung Hohensalzburg museum. The central location on Mozartplatz makes it a natural starting point for exploring the old city, and the museum’s introductory function — orienting visitors within the city’s long history — makes it particularly valuable early in a Salzburg stay.

For visitors seeking more than a surface impression of Salzburg’s past, the Salzburg Museum provides the most comprehensive single account available in the city. Its range of subject matter, quality of presentation and central location combine to make it an essential reference point for anyone seriously engaged with what this remarkable city has to offer beyond its famous concert halls and baroque facades.

Haus der Natur is consistently ranked among the finest natural history museums in the German-speaking world, occupying an extensive building on Museumsplatz in central Salzburg. Founded in 1924, the museum has developed into an institution of genuine scientific depth while maintaining a broad popular appeal, drawing over 300,000 visitors annually across its many themed halls and interactive displays.

The collection spans palaeontology, mineralogy, zoology, aquatics and space science across more than fifty exhibition rooms spread over six floors. The dinosaur hall, with its large assembled skeletons and fossil displays, is a consistent favourite with visitors of all ages. The aquarium and reptile rooms house living specimens alongside interpretive displays, and the Space Hall presents astronomy and space exploration in an accessible and visually engaging format. The depth of the natural history collections — including exceptional mineral specimens and an extensive zoological survey — ensures that each visit can focus on different areas without exhausting the possibilities.

Haus der Natur is open year-round and is an especially valuable resource for visitors travelling with children, offering several hours of engagement across a wide range of subjects. Rainy days are ideal for extended exploration of the upper floors, while the aquarium section is consistently popular regardless of weather. The museum is located within easy walking distance of the Mozartplatz and the old city centre.

Few natural history museums in Austria match Haus der Natur for the combination of scientific collection depth, accessible presentation and family-friendly facilities. Its sustained investment in exhibits and its breadth of subject matter make it one of the most rewarding indoor destinations in Salzburg, appealing equally to curious adults and school-age children.

The Museum of Modern Art Salzburg Rupertinum occupies a beautifully converted baroque building in the heart of the city’s old town, just steps from the Staatsbrücke and the Salzach riverfront. As one of two venues operated by the Museum der Moderne Salzburg — the other being the larger Mönchsberg building — the Rupertinum focuses on graphic art, photography and works on paper, holding one of the most significant collections of prints and drawings in Austria.

The permanent collection spans the twentieth century and includes works by Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Herbert Boeckl and international figures whose careers intersected with the Austrian art world. The changing programme of temporary exhibitions brings contemporary artists and thematic surveys to the building, keeping the programme fresh across multiple visits. The gallery spaces within the historic building balance period architecture with the demands of contemporary display in a way that is consistently well managed.

The Rupertinum is open year-round and is particularly well suited to days when weather limits outdoor exploration of the old city. It makes a natural companion to the main Mönchsberg venue, and a combined ticket allows visitors to engage with the full range of the Museum der Moderne’s collections in a single day. The old town location means it can be easily incorporated into any walking tour of Salzburg’s historic centre.

For those with a serious interest in twentieth-century art on paper, the Rupertinum represents one of the most significant collections accessible anywhere in the Alpine region. Its combination of depth in Austrian modernism, strong temporary programming and an architecturally distinguished setting makes it a rewarding destination for visitors whose interests extend beyond the city’s more widely promoted musical heritage.