Salzburg, Austria (Beyond Mozart)

Salzburg risks being dismissed as a tourist trap built around Mozart and The Sound of Music — both of which attract enormous crowds to predictable experiences. The case for the hidden Salzburg: the Old Town across the Salzach River from the Mönchsberg cliff, the Paracelsus and Nonnberg Abbey neighborhoods, and the Schloss Hellbrunn trick fountains (a 17th-century hydraulic garden designed to drench unsuspecting guests) are genuinely extraordinary and under-visited. The Salzburg Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) on the Mönchsberg — accessible by a lift cut into the cliff face — are world-class. The surroundings offer better landscape than the famous Mozart and Sound of Music tour operators suggest: Königssee lake and Berchtesgaden are 30 minutes by bus; the Hoher Göll and Untersberg mountains are accessible by cable car. Visit in late autumn or early spring for the genuine city minus the summer tourist peak.