The St. Sebastian Cemetery is located next to St. Sebastian Church in the heart of a quiet pedestrian zone and was designed after the model of Italian camposanti. Among those buried there are Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, Paracelsus, and Mozart’s father and wife.
The cemetery was built between 1595 and 1600 on the orders of Wolf Dietrich, based on plans by the Italian architect Andrea Berteleto. Together with St. Peter’s Cemetery, it replaced the abandoned cathedral cemetery as the burial site for the citizens of Salzburg. Previously, a smaller cemetery had stood on the same site, which likely originated from an older plague cemetery. With the opening of the municipal cemetery, the St. Sebastian Cemetery was decommissioned in 1888.
The nearly square grounds measure approximately 90 by 80 meters and are surrounded by 87 arched colonnades. The Gabriel Chapel, located in the center, houses Wolf Dietrich’s crypt, while Andrea Berteleto was the first person to be buried there. The cemetery is accessible via three narrow entrances and borders St. Sebastian’s Church. Today, along with the Stadtgottesacker in Halle and the cemetery in Buttstädt, it is one of the few well-preserved early modern Camposanto complexes in the German-speaking world.
