Mozart was born in the family bedroom on January 27, 1756. He was small and weak as an infant, and his parents worried he wouldn't survive. Wolfgang was the last of seven children for his parents, but only he and his older sister, Nannerl, survived infancy. His father, Leopold, said he was "the miracle which God let be born in Salzburg."
The Mozart family lived on the third floor of the "Hagenauer Haus" in the center of Salzburg. The house was owned by Johann Lorenz Hagenauer, who was a wealthy spice merchant and would become a strong supporter and financial backer of the Mozart family. The building opened into a street fish market.
The Mozart family lived in this modest, four-room apartment until Wolfgang was 17. It was in the music room where a nearly five-year-old Wolfgang shocked the family when, without any music lessons, he played a piece on the keyboard that his sister had been practicing for weeks. Soon after, he started composing pieces for the keyboard.
Today, Mozart's childhood home is one of the most visited museums in Salzburg. In this episode, Katie Mahan takes us into Mozart's Geburtshaus (birthplace) for a tourist-free walk through the house and shares a wealth of information about his early years.
