Royal Palace of Gödöllő

The Royal Palace of Gödöllő is the largest Baroque palace in Hungary, built in the 1740s for Count Antal Grassalkovich, a nobleman who had made his fortune as a royal administrator. After his family's line died out, the palace passed to the Habsburg crown, and from 1867 it became the official summer residence of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth. The palace reached its greatest splendour during this period, with elaborate rooms decorated for the empress and a programme of state visits and royal hunts.

The 20th century was not kind to the palace: it was used as a military hospital in both world wars, then as a Soviet barracks, and much of the interior was damaged or stripped. Restoration has been ongoing since the 1990s and continues today, with most of the state rooms and the empress's apartments now open to visitors. The guided tour covers the royal apartments — including the remarkable blue sitting room commissioned by Elisabeth — the throne room, and a comprehensive exhibition on the palace's history and its restoration. The park (Queen Elisabeth Park) is accessible separately and makes a good walk. Allow two to three hours for palace and park combined.

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A story
Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) loved Gödöllő more than almost any other royal residence. She retreated here to escape the formality of the Vienna court, riding horses across the surrounding countryside in a way that the rigid Habsburg etiquette of the capital would never have permitted. The stables she maintained here were among the finest in Europe. When Franz Joseph I presented the palace to Elisabeth as a gift following the Compromise of 1867 that created the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, he was partly acknowledging her extraordinary popularity with the Hungarian public — she had learned the language and genuinely liked the country, which the Hungarians reciprocated.