The Palace of Lackenbach was first mentioned in 1553 in the purchase contract transferring the domain of Landsee to Miklós Oláh, Archbishop of Gran. The stately home not only served economic and administrative purposes, but its situation on level ground also offered more amenable living conditions than the nearby castle of Landsee, with its military orientation.
The palace was the main Esterházy residence until 1628, and when Nicholas was invested with the office of Palatine in 1625, it also became the seat of the Hungarian Viceroy.The palace architecture follows the Renaissance concept of a symmetrical cleavage of the landscape. This is still manifest in the lines of the terrain, avenues, hedges, ditches, paths and the surrounding walls and arrangement of the trees in the orchards.Its state of preservation is unique for a Renaissance complex; this also true of the orchard meadow with ancient and very rare fruit trees of the nineteenth century and the seventeenth-century “Königshügel” – The King’s Hill – formed of heaped-up earth.
