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Hallein's historic importance as a salt-processing and distribution point is still in evidence in the centre's charming town houses, which once belonged to the wealthy merchants who controlled the trade. This clutch of tastefully restored seventeenth-century buildings, resplendent in shades of blue and salmon pink, line the compact, pedestrianized squares that form the core of the town - Unterer Markt, Oberer Markt, Bayrhamerplatz and Kornsteinplatz .

Hallein's Celtic heritage is the main attraction at the Stadtmuseum (May-Oct daily 9am-5pm; öS60/¬4.38), a few steps north of Oberer Markt at Pflegerplatz 5. Housed in the former Saltzkammer, from which the salt trade was administered, the museum holds a well-presented collection of earthenware, daggers and bronze jewellery (labelled in German). The star exhibit is undoubtedly the Schnabelkanne , or beaked jug, of Dürrnberg, found in a princely grave near the salt mine, and decorated with a stylized leonine beast (a possible representation of the Celtic god Taranis) with a human head in its mouth. The next floor up concentrates on the history of the salt industry from the Middle Ages onwards, with models of the brine pipelines that brought the dissolved salt down from the mountain, the salt-panning workshops, which once stood on an island in the River Salzach, and the boats that ferried the stuff downstream. All stages of the production process feature in a cycle of eighteenth-century paintings, covering the walls of three rooms originally decorated for Sigismund III Graf von Schrattenbach, penultimate Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.