Immediately west of the Rupertinum, Fischer von Erlach's sizeable Kollegienkirche dominates the Universitätsplatz, an elongated square peppered with stalls selling local sausages and cheese. Squeezed between two chunky towers is the church's most idiosyncratic feature, a bowed facade which juts forth like a huge bay window. Anton Pfaffinger's high altar of 1740, with classical columns presenting a rather too literal allegory of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, seems lost within Ehrlach's hangar-sized interior. Behind the church, Hofstallgasse is dominated by the rather utilitarian facade of the 1930s Festspielhaus, built to provide the Salzburg Festival with a central concert venue. Guided tours (daily: July– Aug 9.30am, 2pm & 3.30pm; June & Sept 2pm & 3.30pm; Oct– May 2pm; €5) provide access to the two concert halls inside, as well as the courtyard in which outdoor performances are held – a curious quadrangle of rock-hewn niches which once served as the archiepiscopal riding school's stables. Drastic building works will continue until at least 2006 to replace the unpopular smaller hall with a new auditorium, the Mozart Hall. Beside the Festspielhaus, a staircase leads from the Toscaninihof up onto the Mönchsberg hill. The less energetic can take the nearby Mönchsberg lift (Mönchsbergaufzug; daily May to mid-Sept 9am–9pm; mid-Sept to April 9am–6pm; €2.60 return).

Northeast of the Festspielhaus, but still in the shadow of the Mönchsberg, is the Pferdschwemme, a horse-trough built in 1700 for the archbishop's riding school and embellished with a range of equine motifs. Murals of a range of different breeds form the backdrop to the fountain, which centres on a statue of a loincloth-clad youth grappling with an unruly horse – a possible reference to the story of Alexander the Great taming the wild horse Bucephalus. A couple of hundred metres down Bürgerspitalgasse, the Bürgerspital is a sixteenth-century almshouse now containing the Spielzeugsmuseum (Toy Museum; daily 9am–5pm; €2.70), an unassuming and largely unlabelled collection of model railways, dolls, houses, puppets, paper theatres and other playthings. There are regular children's programmes that allow younger visitors to get their hands messy making toys of their own.