Friedenslärche
Approximate location.
A farmer from the Tettenbach farm came home alive from the First World War, and in 1918 he planted a larch to say thank you. That is the whole of the documented story, and it is enough. This is the Friedenslärche, the peace larch, and it is still growing beside the pilgrimage path in Oberndorf bei Salzburg a little over a century later. It is not an ancient tree, and nobody claims it is. At about 108 years it is young by the standards of this map, and no source records its girth or its height. What it has is a date, a reason and a place. Oberndorf lists it among its Kleindenkmäler, the small monuments of the town, rather than among protected natural monuments. The path it stands on, Maria-Bühel-Straße, climbs from the Stille-Nacht-Platz in the town up to the pilgrimage church of Maria Bühel. The larch grows on the way up, near the little Wasserkapelle a few hundred metres below the church. A photograph from April 2022 shows it standing. The sources say only Lärche, larch. In this part of Austria that is almost certainly the European larch, but nobody has written it down. Our pin marks the stretch of road rather than the trunk. If you walk up the hill, tell us exactly where it stands and which larch it is.
Maria Bühel-Straße, on the pilgrimage path below the Wallfahrtskirche Maria Bühel (near the Wasserkapelle Maria Bühel), Oberndorf bei Salzburg You can recognise it as a larch, a conifer that turns gold and drops its needles in autumn. It stands beside the pilgrimage path on Maria-Bühel-Straße, near the small Wasserkapelle below the church.
Free, standing beside the public pilgrimage path/street (Maria-Bühel-Straße) that leads up to the Wallfahrtskirche Maria Bühel. Open, no permission or ticket needed.
Train from Salzburg Hauptbahnhof to Oberndorf, about 25 minutes, then an uphill walk of roughly 25 to 30 minutes along Maria-Bühel-Straße or the Kalvarienbergstiege pilgrimage steps toward Maria Bühel.