The Hauptplatz and the Trinity column

The Linz Hauptplatz is one of the largest enclosed squares in Europe: a long rectangle of about 13,000 square metres, laid out in the thirteenth century and ringed by baroque façades in ochre, pink and cream, with the old town hall on one side and the Danube two streets beyond the northern end.

In the middle stands the Dreifaltigkeitssäule, a twenty-metre column of white Salzburg marble raised in 1723 in thanks for surviving plague, fire and invasion. It is the anchor of every frame here: pale stone against coloured plaster, and enough open ground around it to work a subject at any distance you like — which is unusual in a European old town, where most squares are too tight for that.

The square runs roughly north–south, so the long façades take side light morning and evening and the stone floor is bright through the middle of the day. The first two hours after sunrise are the only time it is genuinely empty; from mid-morning the trams cross it every few minutes and the market stalls are up.

Summer means terraces across the northern half and a busy square until late. From late November it holds one of the country's larger Christmas markets, which fills it completely with huts and lights for six weeks — a good picture, but a different one, and not a place for a quiet portrait.