No tourist Trapp

The house of the real sound of music family has been turned into a hotel.

Executive summary by darmansjah

Did you know that there were ten, not seven, von Trapp children? Neither did I until I visited Villa Trapp, the former home of the family who inspired The Sound of Music, which is now a hotel.

Beyond the attraction of sleeping in the real Maria’s bedroom, this 19^th-century mansion turned guesthouse is probably the only place in Salzburgto provide the truth behind the Hollywood legend.

‘The children were disappointed by the way the film portrayed their father,’ says hotel manager Christopher. ‘He was a gentle natured, mu’

In sic-loving man, who used his whistle as a bit of fun; a way of gathering the brood in a pre-mobile age.’

Maria was indeed a novice nun at the Benedictine abbey of Nonnberg and sent to the von Trapp family as a tutor, but that is where the similarity ends. ‘The real Maria was kind but had quite a temper,’ says Christopher. ‘She taught the family to sing madrigals and saved them from financial ruin by renting out rooms during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In that same decade, the musical talent of the Trapp Chamber Choir led them to victory in the 1936 Salzburg Music Festival. Two years later, when the Nazis took over Austria, the von Trapps refused to fly the swastika and sing at Hitler’s birthday party. But instead of climbing every mountain to Switzerland, they left for the United States, where their concerts were a success well into the 1950s.

Such as the stories guests share over the highly polished breakfast table at Villa Trapp, for this is where The Sound of Music has its home.