Glasshouse
Views and passages.
Where you don’t throw stones, ideas sprout. A courtyard that accommodates a herb garden may also have a glasshouse. It is an unusual place for meetings, open and free, full of daylight and positive energy, the way meetings in it should be. In summer you can sit on the raised beds in the herb garden. You are surrounded by the spicy scent of Syrian mint, savory and rosemary while you sip a delicately bitter green tea and look out over the inner courtyard typical of Salzburg with its arcades, conglomerate columns and vaulted corridors.
The part of the house facing the festival district is around 100 years younger than the original building on Getreidegasse. In 1428 Martin Aufner obtained a “letter of permission” for “a door” in the Frauengarten (von Fron, an agriculturally used monastery garden).
Over time, a parallel structure was created along the entire length of Getreidegasse, which was initially connected to the houses on the side of the Getreidegasse by wooden platforms and later by brick arcades – the typical inner courtyards and through houses were created. They also had a hygienic function; Every Saturday a flood of the Almkanal carried the rubbish into the Salzach. Nevertheless, things may have been chaotic: almost all of the houses housed a shop or a craft business “on the ground floor”, so that the courtyards and through houses were used as storage and dumps.
These days we are more comfortable. In winter the snowflakes slide gently onto the glass roof. The large stone on the wooden table comes from Nepal and was a gift for our opening in 1998. It found its place here and is still a good companion today. Have we found the philosopher’s stone? Who knows. Above us the sky. One look up is enough to expand our horizons.
