Exploration of a building and its landscape
Question marks about the Esterházy Palace in Fertőd
MúzeumCafé 37.
Spend years in one mansion or palace and you get to know every bit of the building, especially if you participate in research projects and restoration. This has been my experience in Eszterháza (Fertőd), where I feel that the question marks multiply in proportion to the amount of knowledge gained. The connections of this palace, the entire landscape arrangement cannot be documented simply with the traditional methods of art history, not even if we are familiar with the age, its style and the thinking of 18th-century aristocrats. Something more is involved here, something quite unique. The Esterházy Palace in Fertőd is a fascinating product of Baroque-Rococo secular architecture, which with its dimensions, architectural qualities and gardens, its furnishings and treasures, reflects the era of a fabulously rich princely family. Concerning Miklós Esterházy (1714–1790), who had the palace built, most people think that he was an extravagant aristocrat who squandered his vast income and whose name in Austria used to be associated with the epithet prachtliebende, which literally means a mentality excessively drawn to glittering exteriors. For professionals the palace complex represents the Lustschloss (merry-making) type, widespread in the 17th and 18th centuries, an architectural and horticultural composition suitable for a high-society household. An important characteristic of its formation was the creation of the conditions serving aristocratic life in terms of both luxury and the arts, in harmony with an appropriately formed natural environment. Furthermore, with its material and intellectual heritage, it is a defining location of Hungary’s 18th-century cultural history and the enduring manifestation of Esterházy patronage.