Hotel Schloss Monchstein by Jamie Dunford Wood

This heavily marketed hotel gets on to you as soon as you pick up the telephone, a recorded message offering you wedding facilities in the castle chapel. Position-wise, the hotel is wonderful, with views over the town from the Monchsberg, and with extensive and well kept grounds for relaxing, and yet only a short taxi or elevator ride to the old town. That makes it unusual - an ivy covered country house/castle hotel with grounds to match in the middle of town . A hotel only since 1948, it is now part of the Relais and Chateaux Group, and founder of an association of castle hotels in Europe. Like Amberley Castle in southern England, it makes much of its castle heritage, with its 'castlebreakfast' to match Amberley's more alliterative 'castle cuisine', and sometimes you wish it wouldn't. As castles go, it's no great shakes, and its claim to be Salzburg's only 5 star castle hotel is slightly disingenuous, as there are no other castle hotels in the vicinity. The brochure shows a blond woman in a silk nightie playing the chatelaine in various parts of her suite, and a helpful former guest directory lists James de Rothschild (Baron) alongside Franz Beckenbauer (Football Trainer).

And yet, without all that marketing hype, the hotel itself is rather nice. It has a curiously English cottage feel about it, the Versace prints in the cosy reception area and in two of the rooms the only dissenting voice. The Blue Danube wafts gently from hidden speakers, and it's very quiet. The corridors smell of furniture polish and an English country house, cosy not grand.

The rooms
The 15 rooms and suites are on 3 floors, dotted about in castle fashion up wood panelled stairs, and all have wooden parquet flooring with semi rococo furnishings, comfortable, elegant and yet not overornate nor super-luxurious, though sometimes of rather uncomfortable shapes, which makes the decor a little forced and out of kilter in places. The bathrooms could do with an upgrade, as they are old fashioned and basic, with twee tiling. Some walls are sponge painted, 80s style, others are covered in fabric. The 4 superior rooms have little seating areas, and views are of the chestnut-shaded garden or the town. The award-winning Paris Lodron Restaurant is gothic and dark, and there's a small and cosy walnut paneled bar - all the sitting and dining areas are arranged in a series of interconnecting spaces, which cosies up the place. Oil portraits of Maria Theresa and other worthies are scattered about. However, there's not much action in the day as everyone goes down to town.

Outside the tiny chapel, unique only in so far as it's small and it's in a castle, are a series of brass plaques inscribed with the names of those married there, another piece of clever marketing. They reached 500 couples in 1995. Scanning the names, the vast majority are Japanese. They need to translate that message.