See a show at the Salzburg Puppet Theatre

The theatre operates like a miniature opera house, welcoming audiences to its 300-seat baroque auditorium.

Performances are given every day at fixed times, and change according to the season. These include operas such as The Nutcracker and The Magic Flute, and fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Little Prince and Peter and the Wolf. Some shows are offered in short versions, to make them more accessible to young children. If you're worried about your toddlers' attention span, choose tickets for one hour instead of two.

Tip: if you'd like to see two shows in one, you can do so with "The best of", a 40-minute performance of the best-known arias from "The Magic Flute" and "Sound of Music".

You can book your tickets and view the programme on the theatre's website.

As well as the originality of the performances themselves, a visit to the puppet theatre is a characteristic cultural activity in Salzburg. The Aicher family, who founded the theatre, have kept it going for 107 years. Over three generations, they have succeeded in perpetuating this art form, which is unique in Central Europe, and in perfecting the puppeteers' technique. Today, they are recognised for their expertise.

UNESCO, aware of this exceptional artistic wealth, inscribed the theatre on the list of intangible cultural heritage in 2016.

More specifically, the technique used during performances was declared a cultural asset worthy of preservation, as "the most developed form of puppet and figure theatre".

The Salzburg Puppet Theatre employs 12 puppeteers. To succeed in this profession, they have to be multi-talented: a sense of musicality, manual dexterity, the ability to empathise with their characters... It's thanks to them that the magic comes to life. During the performance, we often forget that the protagonists are made of wood, not flesh and bone.

If you'd like to find out more about the craft and how the little characters are made, we recommend stopping off at the Puppet Museum after a performance. Located in the Salzburg fortress, the museum is a 17-minute walk from the theatre. It features a number of historic puppets that once belonged to the theatre (Papageno and Papagena from Mozart's Magic Flute, for example). You can even play with some of the more recent puppets!