"Salzkammergut" means the Estate of the Salt Chamber. How did such a mundane name come to designate one of the most beautiful regions on earth? Simple history. From the 7th century on the Land of Salzburg was ruled by the Archbishop of Salzburg with absolute wordly authority.
Since time immemorial people have lived in this area because it holds fabulously rich deposits in one of the most vital of all commodities for primitive civilizations - salt. Without salt, meat could not be preserved. So important was salt to the early Romans that the soldiers were paid salarium, the money they needed to buy salt, (from the Latin word sal, meaning salt).
The ancient Celts mined salt here, and a local village, inhabited now more than 2500 years, provides the name to the late iron age of European history, the Hallstatt Period.
Later the Romans took over and gave Latin names to local areas, including the nearby city which they called Juvavum. Situated on a significant navigable river with a ring of steep hills for protection, the site made an ideal fortification. After the Roman empire crumbled into disaray, a priest came as an emissary from the Archbishop of Worms in Germany to organize things. Because of all the salt mining and the prominence of salt in the local culture, he decided to name the remains of the Roman town Salzburg, i.e., Salt City. The monastary Ruprecht founded near the Christian catacombs in Salzburg at the end of the 7th century is the oldest monastary north of the Alps.
Ruprecht's successor, Virgil (an Irish priest) received an Archbishop's rank, and over time the Archbishops of Salzburg gained absolute political power in the land and city. Their reliance on the salt revenues from the magically beautiful area of alps and glacial lakes to the east of the city created the Salt Chamber, which exercised total monopoly on the area, even restricting who could enter the area.
No matter ~ that was then, this is now. After the Congress of Vienna reapportioned the political boundaries of Europe in 1815, the Land of Salzburg became a province in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then later part of the Republic of Austria. Now the Estate of the Salt Chamber is open to whomever wishes to visit and enjoy the hiking, the biking, the sailing, the history, and the breath-taking beauty.
