Godollo Palace is the biggest Baroque castle in Hungary.
Much of 19th-century Budapest was built by the ruling Habsburg family, who had laid claim to most of central Europe by the time they kicked the Ottomans out of the city in 1686. In the 1890s the Habsburgs were still in power and the extravagantly Baroque Gödöllö Palace became the favored summer home of Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife, Hungary’s much-adored Elisabeth of Bavaria. Visiting Gödöllö Palace from Budapest makes an entrancing day out as it’s only 30 km (18.5 miles) northeast of Budapest.
Usually known as Sisi, the empress collected great houses across Europe like mere mortals collect stamps, and together with her husband commissioned monumental buildings in Budapest, including the Hungarian State Opera House and the Danube Palace, for the city’s millennium celebrations in 1896. Under her patronage Gödöllö Palace was soon kitted out as one of the most luxurious and sizeable Baroque castles in the world, a whitewashed fairytale 17th-century confection surrounded by vast estates.
Sisi set about upgrading the interior of the palace to her personal taste but sadly all her improvements to the palace were destroyed when the Soviet army took over Gödöllö after World War II; the palace was used as an army barracks and slowly stripped of its finery. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the palace was returned to the Hungarian people in a dilapidated state.
By 1996, Gödöllö had received a major overhaul; its ornate exterior is once more coated in pastel colors and its spectacular colonnaded central wing is smothered in arched windows, wrought-iron balconies and a pediment bearing the Habsburg coat of arms – all topped by a red-brick dome. The interior once again boasts a succession of elaborate, gilded apartments, stuffed full of priceless furniture, dripping chandeliers, statuary and Habsburg portraits. Along with the weaponry collection, the highlights include Sisi’s sumptuous, private apartments, complete with secret passageways through which she apparently smuggled her lovers up to her bedroom.
Outside the extensive formal gardens cover 26 hectares and are slowly being restored; the estate also encompasses the Royal Stables and an elegant Baroque manège reminiscent of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, where there are daily displays of traditional Hungarian horsemanship.
Visiting Gödöllö Palace from Budapest from Budapest Things to Do