After the house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born became too small for the Mozart family, the whole family moved to the Tanzmeisterhaus on what used to be Hannibalplatz in 1773. The house is now home to a museum about the lives of the Mozart family and is known under the name ‘Mozart Residence’. Just don’t try to find Hannibalplatz. It’s called Markartplatz now.
The new, more spacious home had plenty of space for friends and musicians. From 1773 to 1787, the Mozart family wrote 232 letters from this address that we know of, and 215 arrived at the house. Many letters have gone missing. Mozart’s mother died in Paris in 1778, and Mozart’s sister Nannerl married and moved to St Gilgen in 1784. Leopold now lived in the spacious home alone. On the 25th of July 1785, his grandson Leopold Alois Pantaleon came into the world and was handed into his grandfather’s care. After Leopold Mozart’s death on the 28th of May 1787, the house had many owners.
On the 16th of October 1944, around two thirds of the house was destroyed by a bomb. The house’s owner at the time sold the bombed part of the house to the Assicurazioni Generali company, which set up offices that were eventually purchased by the Mozarteum Foundation in 1989. The Mozartseum Foundation had already purchased the remaining part of the Tanzmeistersaal Hall for museum purposes in 1955. The offices were demolished on the 2nd of May 1994, and the building’s reconstruction to comply with the old plans began on the 4th of May. The Mozart Residence was reopened on the 26th of January 1996.
At that time, a ‘Tanzmeister’ (dance teacher) played an important role: he not only taught dance, but also prepared young aristocrats for life at court, and knew how to tackle difficult court etiquette.