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Location: Lindhofstraße 7, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Year of Inscription: 2024
Venue Type: Beer Hall / Brewery Tap / Historic Venue / Huge
Map
Description
Gallery
| EBG Rating: | 8.6/10 |
| Choice/ Quality of Drinks | ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Their own brewery beers served ‘vom Holzfass’, a wooden barrel into the classic steinkrug (stone mug). Welcome to Austria, you’ve arrived. |
| Style/ Décor | ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Astounding venue which begins by approaching a brewery complex then entering a relatively modest kiosk where glasses are picked up, drinks are paid for and beer is tapped. Then you enter the true beer halls, vast spaces capable of seating thousands, each with a subtly different, yet familiar appearance. The scale surpasses even the grandest German affairs. |
| Atmosphere/ Character | ❤️❤️❤️❤️ The Schwemme, you either like it or you don’t. That big beer hall murmur of laughter and song and discourse cascading off high ceilings and hard surroundings. The experience can be dialled down to a small scale conversation between close friends or a huge singalong and party without the two even necessarily crossing paths. |
| Amenities/ Events | ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Food, outdoor seating, snacks, self-service, private events |
| Value For Money | ❤️❤️❤️❤️ A fair price for the beer from the barrel. Marzen and a seasonal special is available for much less than you’d pay at some Bierstuben in the city centre. |
| Description | One of the most famous beer halls in the world, a trip to Salzburg without a trip to this cavern, cathedral, and shrine to beer and socialising is to somewhat miss the point. The scale of the place, even by the standards of lustily sized beer halls like Fruh, Augustiner and Hofbrauhaus is something to behold, and on a busy evening you could easily be convinced the entire city’s residents have decamped here. On arrival, fetch your 0.5l or 1l stoneware mug from the shelves, and rinse it in the fountain by the cash-desk. This ensures it is clean and cool enough. Then pay for your beer, and you’ll receive a voucher, which you hand over with your stein at the beer counter, and the stein is returned to you, full and foaming. Then take your place among the many rooms which flank a long food court where canteen dishes help soak up the booze. Beer is served direct from the wooden barrel and designed to be smooth and highly attenuated – that is to say, drinkable. Highly unusually, food can be brought in. Thus people have always brought wooden cutting boards for the food, cutlery, napkins, bacon, cheese and pickles in picnic baskets. This is a complex with a close connection to the Benedictine order of monks who converted the venue from an army barracks in the 19th century. 5,000 square metres floor space is considered the largest establishment of its kind in Austria. A grand total of 2,400 seats in divided into five large halls, three smaller rooms and the splendid beer garden with its magnificent chestnut trees – a welcome source off shade for guests during the summer. Speaking of halls: in 2017, a new hall was added to the heritage-protected Augustiner Bräustübl: the Abt-Nicolaus-Saal. If it looks familiar, you are not dreaming: it is in fact the historic marble hall of Salzburg’s main railway station, which was actually moved from there to Mülln. The Bräustübl has an average of over 600,000 visitors a year, and is also home to over 240 Stammtische [tables for regulars]. What is dangerous about the place is that your entire trip to Salzburg could be consumed coming here again and again. It is an interesting juxtaposition, the huge Schwemme and gregarious atmosphere against the refined, high arts on display in Salzburg centre, and shows that there are earthier delights to Austrian life. Simply unmissable. (Added April 2024) |
