Alter Markt

In the middle of Alter Markt stands an octagonal marble basin with St. Florian above it. It remains from the square where food was traded for a long time and where the entire city gathered daily. The fountain provided shared water in the marketplace, and the square was a place for the public affairs of craft fellowships. When the market was moved, the square was given the name Old Market, and its former trade remained in its name.

In sixteen twelve, at Salzburg's common market, a butchers' apprentice was thrown into the central fountain. This was how he was released from his apprentice status. The young man had already mastered the trade and was seeking recognition as a journeyman: his new status determined whether he could leave his position as an apprentice, hire himself out in his trade, and join the fellowship of butchers.

The rite was called the Butchers' Leap. By craft custom, the water washed away transgressions committed during the apprenticeship. After the bathing, the former apprentice was recognized as a journeyman and admitted to celebrations and gatherings of his senior fellows. The transition was confirmed publicly: not in a workshop yard, but in the middle of the main food market, before the townspeople, at a fountain used daily by the entire city.

The present octagonal marble basin appeared in the second half of the seventeenth century, when the custom already existed. St. Florian, protector against fires, was later placed above it. Butchers continued to jump over the basin's rim until Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo, a reformer of city customs, prohibited “jumps into the fountain” as an abuse in seventeen eighty-three. By the turn of the nineteenth century, initiations here had ceased.

The main market was moved from here to Universitätsplatz in eighteen fifty-seven. Seventy years later, the court apothecary Franz Willvonseder proposed giving the former market square the name Alter Markt—Old Market. His proposal was accepted, and the square's former purpose remained in its address.

The Butchers' Leap was revived over time, but now in the courtyard of St. Peter's Abbey: new journeymen are immersed there in a wooden barrel. At Alter Markt, the marble basin remains, from which an apprentice once emerged with a new craft status.