Universitätsplatz

The market stalls on Universitätsplatz stand there by a decision of city officials made more than one and a half centuries ago. Bread, fruit, and vegetables had already been sold here before then, but on May first, eighteen fifty-seven, the city's main market was moved here. The old trading place stretched from Waagplatz to what is now Alter Markt. The magistrate was clearing the cramped center of carts and stalls: Salzburg was growing, construction of the railway station and railway bridge was beginning, and the street network was changing. The new market required a space where sellers could drive in with their goods and quickly take empty carts away.

Such a space had previously been prepared for entirely different people. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, this was Frauengarten, the garden of the Benedictine St. Peter's Abbey. Archbishop Markus Sittikus persuaded the Benedictines to take part in founding a university, but died before completing the undertaking. His successor, Paris Lodron, sought imperial recognition for the educational institution and obtained it in October sixteen twenty-two. A square formed beside the university buildings, called Kollegienplatz, or College Square. The present name comes from that institution. The university was closed in eighteen ten, when Salzburg passed to Bavaria, and restored in nineteen sixty-two. The old building is once again occupied by the theology faculty.

The market received a ready-made square between university buildings and through-passages. Officials laid it out almost like a warehouse plan. Sellers of butter, lard, poultry, and game were assigned the shaded side: their earnings depended on whether they could preserve their goods until they reached the buyer. Vegetable, fruit, egg, and grain sellers were placed closer to the middle, with flower sellers behind them. Millers and bakers were required to enter with bread through Ritzerbogen, place their carts along the passage, and leave the square from the other side, through what is now Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz. Outside carriages were prohibited from entering during trading.

A market commissioner, a city employee who assigned spaces and collected fees, oversaw this order. A seller who paid money a month or a year in advance secured a particular plot. Anyone who paid only for a day received an available space in order of arrival. Being late could leave a trader with perishable goods in the sun.

The market instruction even specified things that officials had already seen at city markets. It was forbidden to skin frogs, slaughter, strangle, or pluck birds, or sell fly agarics in the square. Dogs could not be brought in; an exception was made for animals pulling goods carts, but they had to wear muzzles and could be kept only until unloading. These rules remained in force for almost half a century.

Grünmarkt, or Green Market, still occupies Universitätsplatz. Ritzerbogen remains at its southern edge: bread carts once entered through this arch, after the market commissioner had already assigned them a space and a direction of exit.