Viennese Escapes: Eszterházy Palace in Fertőd (Hungary)

The House of Esterházy
was a noble family in the Kingdom of Hungary since the Middle Ages. From the 17th century they belonged to the great landowner magnates of the Kingdom of Hungary, during the time it was part of the Habsburg Empire and later Austria-Hungary. *

Eszterházy Palace
Fertőd (Hungary)

The Esterházys
maintained a number of other residences throughout the Kingdom of Hungary and Transylvania, and those Esterházy princes who preferred the stylish life of the capital spent most of their time in Vienna. *

In the 1770s,
Prince Nikolaus Esterházy,
who disliked Vienna,
had a magnificent new palace constructed
at Eszterháza (now Fertőd), in rural Hungary
on the site of a former hunting lodge. *

This is the most admired of the Esterházy homes,
often called the "Hungarian Versailles." *

The composer Joseph Haydn
lived many years in the Eszterházy palaces
of Fertőd and close-by Eisenstadt,
working as a court musician and composer
for this illustrious noble Hungarian family.

Haydn was born
in the Austrian village of Rohrau,
near Eisenstadt, in the Burgenland Region,
which borders Hungary.





Details of the wrought-iron gates
by ironsmith Karl Johann Franke.


*)
Quoted from Wikipedia,
The House of Esterházy.