Amadeus | Kroměříž Archbishop's Palace — where Salieri first hears the voice of God

Salieri stands at the back of a crowded reception with a pastry in his hand, half-bored, and then the wind serenade begins in the next room. He puts the pastry down. The camera stays on F. Murray Abraham's face while the Adagio of the Gran Partita unfolds, and a man's life quietly breaks in two.

Forman shot that scene 250 kilometres east of Prague, in the Archbishop's Palace at Kroměříž. He needed a Prince-Archbishop's residence that had never been modernised, and Moravia handed him one: a vast Baroque complex rebuilt after a fire in 1752, with an Assembly Hall of white and gold stucco, a picture gallery holding Titian's Flaying of Marsyas, and a working chapter library. Almost nothing needed dressing. The extras simply walked into rooms that had held exactly this kind of gathering.

The palace and its two gardens — the formal Flower Garden and the landscaped Podzámecká below the walls — were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998, and both are open to visitors with ticketed guided tours of the state rooms.

Take the tour that includes the Assembly Hall and stand near the doorway rather than in the middle. That is Salieri's position: near enough to hear everything, far enough to be nobody.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC-licensed view of Kroměříž Archbishop's Palace.