Updated on July 29, 2013
‘The Sound of Music’ tour
This tour was one of the most emotional highlights of our time in Europe – seeing the places in the movie which I had seen many many times and imaging Julie Andrews and the children here making the movie was fantastic.
We booked the tour well ahead and joined our group to board a minibus. We first toured briefly around the city of Salzburg seeing the Mirabella Gardens where ‘Do Re Mi’ was performed, the Festival Hall, where the family sang ‘Edelweiss’, the convent cemetery used at the end of the movie, and the mansion on the outskirts of town used as the back of the mansion where Maria and the children fell out of the boat into freezing water.
Our guide told us interesting on-set stories about how the film was made and played music from the movie related to each place, so everyone could sing along.
We then headed out of town to the small town to see the open grassy hills used in the opening titles and where Maria sang “The Sound of Music’; the avenue of trees (now a lot taller) where the children were spotted playing by their father, and the church in the town that was used for the wedding of Maria to Captain Von Trapp.
We also stopped at the mansion used for the front of the Von Trapp house by the lake where Maria sang ‘My Favourite Things’. Beside this is a park containing the gazebo used in the Rolf and Liesl song and dance “Sixteen going on Seventeen” and the Maria and Captain song and dance ‘Something Good’.
We went ourselves to Nonberg Abbey near the Salzburg Castle to see the convent used as the one where Maria had been a postulant and where the nuns sang ‘Maria’ (How do you solve a problem like Maria) and the Mother Abbess sang ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’.
Panorama’s 4 hour Sound of Music Tour
Mirabell Gardens 
The palace garden where the song “Do-Re-Mi” was filmed and the Pegasus Fountain and Do-Re-Mi steps.
Leopoldskron Palace
The tour stops at the lake where the famous boating scene was filmed. You will see the Captain´s backyard and private palace gardens.
Hellbrunn Palace, Gazebo
In the gardens of Hellbrunn Palace is the gazebo which was rebuilt especially for tourists to visit and relive their memories of the song “16 going on 17” and the scene of Maria and Baron von Trapp.
Nonnberg Abbey 
This is still an active convent and is the convent where the “real” Maria was a novice and where she and Baron von Trapp got married in real life.
The Abbey does not allow visits within its walls, but you can walk up to the front gate to their Gothic church for a visit or for church services after our tour.
Salzburg Lake District
The bus then leaves Salzburg for the lake district, passing Lake Fuschl and Lake Wolfgang, where panorama shots and scenes of the picnic were filmed.
Mondsee
This town includes the avenue of trees in the movie and the famous church, where the wedding of Maria and Baron von Trapp was filmed. Panorama Tours leave from near Mozartplatz.
The church has unusual wide stone steps leading from the floor of the nave up to the sanctuary.
St Gilgen – the town by a lake where Mozart’s mother was born and where his sister Nannerl lived – on the way to the Sound of Music ‘wedding church’.
This is the avenue of trees where the children were spotted by their father playing in the trees. Maria was reprimanded for dressing the children in curtains.
The country road where Maria walked singing “I have confidence’ and knocking on the door of the Von Trapp house
The gazebo used in the film was in Salzburg. The million visitors a year it attracted became such a problem that the owners arranged to send the gazebo out of town. It is now in a public park out of town but is locked.
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