Today Schloss Leopoldskron is home to the international non-profit organization Salzburg Global Seminar and Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron. And, far from being a museum, it is a lively meeting place that, together with the palace gardens, offers its guests an extraordinary experience.
The preservation of this unique environment requires special care and regular restoration work. 2012 saw the completion of an eleven-year project for the restoration of the palace gardens – home to Max Reinhardt’s sunken garden theater, as well as dozens of sculptures. The gardens are exclusively accessible to guests of Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron all year round, allowing visitors the opportunity to trace the footsteps of Reinhardt and feel the spirit of times long gone by.
The American Samuel H. Kress Foundation funded the cataloging of the palace’s extensive art collection between 2013 and 2015. The multi-year project served as a means of identifying essential work to be carried out for the restoration of historical pictures and furniture and instructing the staff on the correct handling of this significant cultural heritage.
Schloss Leopoldskron’s special character is appreciated worldwide. None more so than by Karl Lagerfeld, who transformed it into an opulent runway as part of his CHANEL Métiers d’Art fashion show in November 2014 and used the palace as a stage just as Max Reinhardt had done. The runway traveled through all the baroque spaces, giving Reinhardt’s heritage renewed recognition.
Leopoldskron and the arts are still closely interwoven to this very day. Famous artists (including Helga Vockenhuber, Ray Bartkus, and Ólafur Elíasson) regularly present their works here. Schloss Leopoldskron is still privately owned and therefore accessible exclusively to hotel guests and conference and event participants. External visitors may only tour the palace and gardens at selected times.
75 Years in 12 Vignettes
With 75 years behind us and more than 40,000 Fellows in 170 countries, Salzburg Global obviously has many stories to tell. The following 12 vignettes have been selected not only for their ability to relate the history of the institution, but also to convey the unlikely symbiosis of a visionary enterprise, conceived at an American university that came to be situated in an eighteenth-century rococo palace in the heart of Europe with the goal of serving the global good.