The house where Mozart died

Don't look for an old house: the building in which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived and died no longer exists, and the department store on the corner now stands on its site. But it was here, in a spacious flat at what was then Rauhensteingasse 970, that the composer spent his last year.

1Dead at 35

Mozart died shortly before one in the morning on 5 December 1791. The parish register gave the cause as "severe miliary fever". Modern doctors have proposed dozens of diagnoses, from kidney infection to rheumatic fever, and none is conclusive.

2The stranger's commission

A few months earlier, a messenger had commissioned a Mass for the dead from him without revealing who was paying. Today we know it was Count Franz von Walsegg, who wanted to pass the work off as his own in memory of his wife. Mozart died before finishing that Requiem, and the mystery of the anonymous client fed every kind of fantasy.

According to what his widow Constanze said years later, Mozart once told her he believed he had been poisoned.

3The Salieri rumour

After his death a rumour spread that the court composer Antonio Salieri had poisoned him out of jealousy. There is no evidence, and historians dismiss it. But Pushkin turned it into a play in 1830 and Peter Shaffer into "Amadeus", filmed by Milos Forman in 1984. Thanks to them, the hoax is now better known than the truth.

4What to look for

• The memorial plaque on the façade of number 8.
• The narrowness of the street, which keeps its 18th-century line.
• The cathedral spire rising to the north: Mozart was married there and his body was blessed there.