The Department Store on the Death Site

The glass front of the department store beside you marks the spot where Mozart died on the fifth of December 1791, thirty-five years old, with an unfinished requiem lying next to his bed.

 

Nothing of the house survives. It was torn down in the nineteenth century, and if you want to see anything of it you have to step inside, because somewhere among the perfumes there's a small memorial corner. The fact that the city which now lives off his name gave him barely any work in his final year is neatly captured in that contrast.

 

There's a stubborn misunderstanding about his burial. He wasn't thrown into a mass grave like a pauper, but laid to rest in a simple shaft grave outside the city walls, exactly as the rules of Emperor Joseph the Second required for almost everyone. Headstones weren't permitted, which is why nobody knows where he lies precisely.

 

What is true is that he left debts behind, and that his widow paid them off in the years that followed by selling his manuscripts.

 

We carry on to the little square with the fountain, just a few steps further along.