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High Style
A Visit Through Vienna By Jamie Moore
Finally, head to the town of Salzburg, where stately churches and countryside farmhouses coexist in the valley. Here you'll find an unlikely combination of magnificence and intimacy.
In nearly any view of the surrounding mountains, you'll likely glimpse a church dome or spire. The Salzburg Cathedral's twin tower Baroque domes are topped with lanterns while the tower of the slender, Gothic-style Franciscan Church holds a bell made in 1468.
Bell towers on roofs are typical of Salzburg, says Johannes von Trapp, the youngest son of the family depicted in the 1965 film The Sound of Music. Johannes' family moved from Salzburg to the mountains of Stowe, Vt., in 1943 and began building an Austrian-style lodge hotel, which he now runs. In constructing Trapp Family Lodge, the family decided to include an Austrian Baroque bell tower on the curved roof.
"Our style here is very much influenced by old Austrian farm houses," says von Trapp. "Except farm house doesn't do the word justice. Some are more than 400 or 500 years old, more like manor houses."
Similar to these homes, the lodge incorporates natural woodwork, and its rooms are accented with original Austrian antiques such as carved wooden chests and statues. Windows open up to beautiful naturalistic gardens. Unlike the prescribed formality of Vienna's gardens, beds of roses, peonies, tiger lilies and other perennials mingle casually among the native trees.
In your gardens, each element you introduce should fit the proportion, scale and style of your house or yard, suggests Dennis Rydberg, president of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. "The great gardens of Europe are famous because the artist has used a limited palette," he says.
So rich is Austria's cache of architectural and botanical elements, the only trouble you'll have is trying to limit the palette for your own home.