The people
The people who run this are the people who guide it. When you write to us, one of us answers. When you meet your guide, you already know their name.
We started guiding in Salzburg years before this brand existed, on the free walking tours where you learn what actually holds a group's attention: not dates, but the stories that make a street mean something. Thousands of guests taught us what a good two hours feels like.
This is that experience, made private. The same city, the same stories, but shaped around the people on the tour instead of the crowd that showed up. We keep the team small because the promise only works if the person who reads your enquiry is the kind of person who will stand next to you on Domplatz.
We live here. The cafés on the routes are cafés we sit in on our own time, and the viewpoints are the ones we take our own visitors to. That is the whole method: nothing on a tour that we would not show a friend.
Founder
Born and raised in Salzburg, Gerhard became a guide the roundabout way: driving a rickshaw through the old town, where passengers kept asking questions he could not answer yet. So he researched the city as if he had never lived in it, passed the state certification for Austria guides, and founded Free Walking Tour Salzburg in 2019, leading its tour for the first 100 days straight.
Here he reads the enquiries, plans the days, and still takes tours himself.
Co-founder
Markus carries the guiding side of the partnership. He came up through the free walking tours too, and here his craft is the day itself: the pace, the detours, and the timing of a good story.
If you want to see how we think about the city before you get in touch, we also writeIntroducing Salzburg. Everything we say here, you can check there.