Grassalkovich Palace: Presidential Residence in Bratislava
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Slovakia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Hungarian
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page23 sections
History
Grassalkovich Palace is an eighteenth-century Rococo–Late Baroque palace in Bratislava, Slovakia, completed in 1760 for Count Antal Grassalkovich I. It stands in the city’s Old Town on the north side of Hodžovo Square and now serves as the official residence of the President of the Slovak Republic. Grassalkovich, a Hungarian aristocrat who headed the Royal Hungarian Chamber, commissioned the palace as a representative summer residence outside Bratislava’s walls.
Construction and court connections
Grassalkovich acquired an old inn and several garden plots north of the Dürre-Maut Gate for the project. Architect Andreas Mayerhoffer designed the palace, which combined a formal residence with a pleasure garden and separate service buildings. At the time, Bratislava was known as Pressburg and served as the capital of Hungary.
The new residence quickly became a center of social and musical life. Grassalkovich maintained his own orchestra, and several works by Joseph Haydn, the Austrian composer of the Classical period, were premiered there. Grassalkovich and his relative Nikolaus I Joseph, Prince Esterházy, supported Haydn as composer and conductor. The palace’s importance also reflected Grassalkovich’s political relationship with Maria Theresa, the Habsburg ruler who reigned as queen of Hungary and Bohemia and as archduchess of Austria from 1740 to 1780.
Ownership changed around 1765 as Grassalkovich sought to retain the empress’s favor. The palace subsequently hosted balls and celebrations connected with the Habsburg court. Haydn conducted the orchestra when Maria Theresa’s daughter Marie Christine gave her marriage vows to Albert of Saxony-Teschen in the chapel of Hof Castle near Pressburg. A later tradition holds that Ľudovít Štúr first declared his love for Adela Ostrolúcka at a ball held in the palace by Archduke Stephen Francis Victor of Austria.
Expansion in the 1770s
After Antal Grassalkovich I died, his son Antal Grassalkovich II enlarged the residence during the 1770s. The plans bear the name of Mathias Walch, a builder from Pressburg, although his exact role remains uncertain. The east and west wings were extended with pavilion-like structures, while the south side received a terrace and a covered carriage passage.
The same campaign reorganized the interior. A partition wall in the west wing was removed to create a large hall, another room was divided into a smaller room and a cabinet, and the chapel received a new altar. During the coronation of Maria Ludovika Beatrix in St Martin’s Cathedral, senior members of the Habsburg family stayed at the palace because Bratislava Castle was no longer a royal residence. The Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen was displayed in the palace chapel for the occasion.
Decline of the Grassalkovich estate
Antal Grassalkovich III died in 1841, bringing the Grassalkovich family line to an end. His widow, Maria Leopoldina of the Esterházy family, could not retain the property. The palace then passed through several uses, including service as a warehouse and as the seat of an educational institution. The garden deteriorated, and its sculptures were lost.
The Karátsonyi counts owned the palace in the 1870s. In 1884, Count Guido Karátsonyi built three luxurious rental houses, known collectively as the Karátsonyi Palaces, in the northwestern part of the former pleasure garden. The last owners before the end of Austria-Hungary in 1918 were Archduke Friedrich of Austria-Teschen and his wife, Isabella of Croy-Dülmen. They bought the palace in 1897 and modernized it as Friedrich’s representative residence, adding a large first-floor dining room and electricity.
Isabella’s lady-in-waiting Sophie Chotek met Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este at the palace. They later entered a morganatic marriage, a union in which the lower-ranking spouse and children did not receive the higher partner’s dynastic rights. The couple were assassinated together in Sarajevo on 18 June 1914.
From Czechoslovakia to the Slovak presidency
After Pressburg became part of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1919, the palace housed the command of the 33rd Regiment of the Czechoslovak Legions and received city representatives. The Czechoslovak Republic confiscated the former Habsburg property and installed the Territorial Military Administration. Much of the original furnishing was subsequently sold or stolen.
From 1939 to 1945, during the First Slovak Republic under Jozef Tiso, the palace served as the seat of the Slovak president. Architect Emil Belluš directed its rapid adaptation. A United States air raid on Bratislava on 16 June 1944 may have targeted the palace, but the bombs missed it and struck nearby buildings.
After the Second World War, the palace was considered as a possible residence for the Czechoslovak president in the Slovak part of the state. Instead, it became the seat of the Board of Commissioners, Slovakia’s executive body within Czechoslovakia. In 1950, President Klement Gottwald assigned the building to a pioneer organization. It became the Klement Gottwald House of Pioneers and Youth, also called the Pioneer Palace, a youth activity center during the socialist period. Its salons accommodated activity groups, the chapel served as storage, a stage was installed in the dining room, and folk dancing took place in the main hall.
The building proved unsuitable for its youth-center role, and the organizations moved to a new building in 1985. Neglect then caused further damage. Plans considered near the end of the communist period included adapting the palace as an art gallery and as an occasional official residence for the Czechoslovak president.
Restoration and presidential use
A major renovation during the 1990s lasted three years. On 30 September 1996, the restored palace was formally handed over to President Michal Kováč. Since then, it has served as the official presidential residence. The restoration was supervised by Emília Kováčová, Slovakia’s inaugural First Lady.
Since the 1990s, the garden has been legally separate from the palace and operates as a public park. Its present arrangement recalls the original Baroque garden only in broad outline.
Remains
Palace layout and exterior
Central pavilion and wings
Grassalkovich Palace is arranged as a Rococo–Late Baroque summer residence with a formal garden. Its main entrance faces south, and a ceremonial staircase rises from the entrance to the piano nobile, the principal ceremonial floor. Smaller staircases connect the other levels. The central pavilion and the lengthened east and west wings, whose pavilion-like ends were added in the 1770s, continue to define the building’s exterior.
The original estate included the palace, a pleasure garden, and detached service buildings. A low building on the east side contained storage areas, woodsheds, stables, carriage houses, and rooms for palace staff. Passages between the palace and these buildings opened toward the garden. A private theater stood at right angles to present-day Banskobystrická Street, approximately opposite house number 4.
Twentieth-century alterations
The adaptation of 1939 to 1945 substantially changed the lower parts of the complex. The low ground-level wings, including the eastern service building, were demolished, as were the thick walls of the courtyard of honor. A fence visually connected the courtyard with the square, while garages and staff sleeping quarters replaced the service building. The carriage passage was lined with marble, and travertine, a porous limestone, was used to face the entire ground floor.
The ceremonial staircase has two Baroque-style stone putti made in the 1940s by an unknown sculptor. Four stone allegorical figures representing the seasons occupy corner niches. They are attributed to the Viennese sculptor Wilhelm Beyer and had previously stood outdoors. The wall paintings were also made in the 1940s.
Garden rooms and chapel
Sala terrena
On the north side, the low vaulted sala terrena, a ground-floor garden room, uses predominantly green and pink plant motifs to extend the garden’s visual language into the interior. Its doors and late-nineteenth-century Rococo-style seats are green. A small fountain stands at the center, while the area near the garden exit contains the torsos of two over-life-size sculptures with ancient or mythological subjects.
Small dining room
The small dining room beneath the president’s office is a vaulted room with late-nineteenth-century furnishings and a view toward the park.
Chapel of St Barbara
The freestanding Chapel of St Barbara was built in the western part of the palace complex in 1768 and consecrated in 1769. It stands immediately west of the palace beside the route toward Kalvaria and the vineyards. Its altar painting, by an unknown artist, depicts the execution of Saint Barbara. Joseph Pichler, an Austrian painter, created illusionistic frescoes on the walls and vaults, including a painted vision of heaven with the Holy Trinity and the dove representing the Holy Spirit.
Most of the chapel’s furnishings date from the eighteenth century. The altar mensa and reliquary shrine were reconstructed in the 1940s, and the shrine door carries a white relief of the Last Supper. The Baroque pews came from the former church of the city hospital on present-day Dunajská Street. A modern replica of a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, presented by Pope John Paul II, is also kept in the chapel.
State rooms on the piano nobile
Great Hall
The Great Hall, historically called the Main Hall, occupies the piano nobile. Its walls have gilded stucco decoration, while the ceiling stucco remains ungilded. Two Baroque-style stoves reproduce the original stoves and can also operate electrically. The crystal chandeliers were made in Bohemian glassworks in the late nineteenth century. Original carved and gilded eighteenth-century candleholders remain on the walls, and slender mirrors between the windows probably arrived from Vienna in 1897. An unusually large Oriental carpet, woven around 1890, covers the floor. The antechamber retains no original decoration.
Audience Room
The Audience Room west of the Great Hall has existed in its present form since 1779 and was historically a music room. Its broad wall fields once held textile panels and later a nineteenth-century tapestry. The room now contains portraits of Charles VI, his wife Elisabeth Christine, their daughter Maria Theresa, and her husband Francis I Stephen. These paintings are loans from the collection at Červený Kameň Castle.
Above the three doors are restored allegories of the liberal arts, representing music and dance, painting, and sculpture. They retain the original pink-toned technique. A copy of a Neoclassical ceramic stove stands in a niche, while most furnishings date from the second half of the nineteenth century.
President’s office
The president’s office occupies the center of the west wing beside the Audience Room. Its furnishings include Baroque- and Rococo-style pieces from the second half of the nineteenth century, a late-nineteenth-century gilt clock in the French Baroque style, and a French Bureau plat desk from around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Green Salon
East of the Great Hall, the Green Salon was historically the Great Dining Room and now also serves as a conference or banquet room. The Viennese firm Heinrich Otto Schmidt supplied its furnishings after historical models known as “Spanish Embassy.” A Baroque chest of drawers and a mirror frame bearing a relief of the Erdődy family coat of arms are exceptions to that group. Landscape paintings date from the second half of the nineteenth century. The room’s crystal chandelier is original and is the largest in the palace, while the carpet was woven in northern Bohemia in 1995.
Golden Salon
The Golden Salon, formerly the Ladies’ Salon, opens through the southern door of the Green Salon. Its name comes from gold-colored wallpaper with Baroque patterns. Most furnishings date from the nineteenth century, alongside a writing cabinet with a tabernacle from the second half of the eighteenth century and a ladies’ writing secretary made in southern Germany in 1724.
Portraits of Antal Grassalkovich I and one of his daughters hang in the room. A late-seventeenth-century painting, probably a free copy of a work by Louis de Boullogne, presents a mythological scene from the life of Andromache, the wife of Hector.
Blue Salon
The oval Blue Salon was intended for the president’s wife. Light-blue wallpaper is paired with matching furniture, porcelain, and ceramic objects. The room contains the Art Deco sculpture group The Abduction of Europa from the Fraureuth manufactory, a painted ceramic vessel made in Zlaté Moravce shortly before 1900, and an Art Deco desk from the 1930s.
Brown Salon
The Brown Salon was formed by joining two smaller rooms and houses the presidential library. Its Baroque-style bookcases date from the second half of the nineteenth century and were supplemented with matching pieces made after 2000. Two brass chandeliers are original, while the globe-shaped drinks cabinet is a later object.
Garden transformation
The original pleasure garden was later destroyed and successively altered. A swimming pool stood before the garden hall, a football field with stands occupied the center, and a miniature railway ran around the grounds. During rebuilding in 1958, these installations were removed, the greenery was renewed, and a fountain was introduced at the center for the first time.
The enclosing walls were demolished, exposing the garden to street noise and dust. A proposed road widening would have required the demolition of the Karátsonyi rental house, the chapel, and the west wing. The present garden is fenced and renewed, but it recalls the original Baroque design only broadly. A statue of Bratislava-born composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel once stood there before being moved to the front of Palais Nester on Hviezdoslav Square.
