Savoy Castle, Bilje, Baroque castle in Bilje, Croatia.
Savoy Castle in Bilje is a quadrangular baroque hunting lodge built between 1705 and 1712, measuring about 56 by 57 metres around a square inner courtyard. It is surrounded by defensive earth walls and a moat, reached by a bridge over the Grabište stream, and a castle chapel dedicated to the Mother of God was added in 1720.
Prince Eugene of Savoy received estates in Slavonia from Emperor Leopold I after the 1697 Battle of Zenta. In 1707 he commissioned a hunting lodge at Bilje, completed in 1712, probably designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt. In 1780 Maria Theresa gave the estate to Marie Christine and Albert of Saxe-Teschen; Archduke Charles laid out the English garden in 1824. After 1918 it became a state agricultural estate.
The castle is named after Prince Eugene of Savoy, who commissioned it in 1707 as a hunting lodge on the Bilje estate. Its cellars once held an exhibition gallery called "Eugen Savojski"; local accounts mention large wine barrels or a prison there. The estate passed to the Habsburg-Teschen branch, and Archduke Charles laid out the English landscape garden in 1824.
The castle stands in Bilje, about ten kilometres from Osijek, and is reached by a bridge over the Grabišta stream. The building and its roughly eight-hectare park are in very poor condition, so visits focus on the exterior and the exhibition gallery "Eugen Savojski" arranged in the basement. The state transferred ownership to the municipality of Bilje in January 2018.
The moat and earthen ramparts around the hunting lodge were not built for defence against armies but probably to keep out bandit gangs and Turkish raiding parties. The quadrangular plan resembles another castle of Prince Eugene, the Promontor palace near Budapest.
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