The Sound of Music: Salzburg and the Salzkammergut

The film opens with Maria twirling on a mountain meadow as the camera finds her. The hill is the Mehlweg, near the Bavarian village of Markt Schellenberg about six miles from Salzburg, filmed between 28 June and 2 July 1964. The idyll cheats a little: the birch trees and the babbling brook were brought in for the cameras. Shooting for the whole film ran from March to September 1964, split between Los Angeles and Salzburg.

Location precision: The opening was shot on an open mountainside, not at an address; the pin marks the Mehlweg area near Marktschellenberg.

Visitor guidance: Open hillside above Marktschellenberg; don't look for the film's trees and brook — they were props.

Maria begins the story as a free-spirited young woman studying to become a nun at Nonnberg Abbey, until the Mother Abbess sends her to the villa of Captain Georg von Trapp as governess to his seven children. The real Maria von Trapp had been a postulant in this same abbey in 1924, and her life became the 1959 Broadway musical and the 1965 film. The convent interiors were rebuilt in a Hollywood studio, but the exterior on screen really is Nonnberg, shot with the other old-town locations between 25 April and 22 May 1964.

Visitor guidance: The abbey church is open to visitors; the cloistered convent itself is closed.

Sent off to the villa, Maria strides through Salzburg's old town singing I Have Confidence, a number filmed here in the Residenzplatz on her way to take up her post with the von Trapp family. She splashes in the Residenz Fountain at the square's centre. The fountain was designed by Tommaso di Garona and raised between 1656 and 1661, and it counts as the largest Baroque fountain in Central Europe. Like the abbey scenes, it was shot in the 25 April to 22 May block.

Visitor guidance: A public square; stand by the fountain where Maria splashed.

Maria wins the children over by teaching them to sing, and the lesson becomes the Do-Re-Mi tour of Salzburg. The number ends here in the Mirabell Gardens, where Maria and the children dance around the Pegasus fountain and hop up the garden steps as though the stairs were a musical scale. The gardens were filmed in the same late-April to late-May block as the rest of the old-town locations, and they are open to visitors as a public park.

Visitor guidance: Public gardens; find the Pegasus fountain first.

Schloss Leopoldskron's lakeside terrace and gardens stand in for the von Trapp villa in scenes shot from 23 May to 7 June 1964. The family returns from a boat ride on the lake here and ends the trip by capsizing the boat. Later the villa hosts a grand party, with guests in formal dress waltzing in the ballroom while Maria and the children watch from the garden terrace. When the Captain finds Maria teaching Kurt the traditional Ländler, he steps in and dances it with her, holding her close.

Visitor guidance: The palace is now a hotel; the classic view is from across the lake.

The glass gazebo where Liesl sings Sixteen Going on Seventeen once stood in the grounds of Leopoldskron. It was later moved and rebuilt in the ornamental gardens of Hellbrunn. The palace there was built in 1613-19 and named for the clear spring that feeds it. One cheat to know: the interiors were recreated slightly larger back in Hollywood for the close-up shots.

Location precision: The gazebo was moved from Leopoldskron to Hellbrunn's gardens; the pin marks Hellbrunn Palace at the heart of the park.

Visitor guidance: Look for it in the Hellbrunn palace park, south of the city.

Maria and the Captain marry. In the story the wedding takes place at Nonnberg, but the cameras went to the baroque church of Mondsee Abbey, a former Benedictine monastery in Upper Austria about fifteen miles east of Salzburg. The company was back on location here on 23 April 1964 to shoot the wedding scenes, before moving on to the old town.

Visitor guidance: A working parish church on Mondsee's main square; check service times before visiting.

At the Salzburg music festival the Captain sings Edelweiss, and the family uses its final number to vanish: after the applause they slip away while Max stalls the audience. They shelter at the abbey, where the Mother Abbess hides them in the cemetery crypt, and two nuns save them by sabotaging the pursuers' car engines. The Felsenreitschule has served the Salzburg Festival as an open-air theatre since 1926. One caveat: the cemetery was a Hollywood studio set modelled on St Peter's Graveyard.

Visitor guidance: A festival venue; book a performance or a guided tour to get inside.