Salzburg, Austria - The Austrian city of Salzburg is not the first place most people would associate with the glamorous world of film but every year about 400, 000 people come here to visit original locations featured in the movie "The Sound of Music". "It was the most successful example of location placement in the history of film making," says Salzburg's tourist chief, Herbert Brugger.
The movie is almost universally known in Asia, the United States and Britain where many people can hum along to at least one tune from the film's score.
Hardly a Christmas goes by in the U.S. without the story of the von Trapp family and its seven children being broadcast on screens across the country.
According to Brugger, for about 80 per cent of the 1.1 million people who visit the region every year, The Sound of Music is the reason they come here.
Salzburg has responded by laying on Sound-of-Music excursions, costume displays and by providing plenty of film-related souvenirs. Even the city's puppet theatre has taken the musical into its programme.
Salzburg is currently building a museum and a hotel recently opened in the house where the real von Trapp family once lived.
