Festetics Palace, Dég, Neoclassical château in Dég, Hungary.
Festetics Palace is a free-standing, one-storey neoclassical building on a U-shaped plan with a basement, its garden front centred on a portico of six Doric columns on pedestals, reached by a gravel ramp rather than steps. The facade is divided 3+5+5+5+3, with strongly projecting corner bays pierced by lunette windows; the courtyard side has a carriage porch on two piers and two Doric columns under a pediment. Inside, the rooms form a single range along a corridor, and the oval hall sits in a corner, not the centre.
Count Antal Festetics commissioned the palace, built between 1815 and 1819 to designs by Mihály Pollack. In the 1920s Count Sándor Festetics modernised it and gave the interiors their present classicist decoration. The family left in 1944; a German military hospital followed, then a children's home until 1996. Restoration was completed and the palace reopened on 8 November 2022.
The mansion's upper floor displays exhibits connected to Freemasonry history, as it housed the archives of Hungarian Masonic lodges for more than a century. This link to the organization has made the place an important center for understanding this cultural movement in the region.
The palace reopened on 8 November 2022 after a 1.5 billion forint renovation, so the ground floor now holds the ticket desk, thematic exhibitions, a period-style café and a gift shop. The park's 1.8 km serpentine lake, its eleven rebuilt footbridges and over three kilometres of restored paths are open without a ticket. The gravel ramp, not a staircase, leads to the garden portico, and the former tennis court is usable again.
A red-brick house from the 19th century sits on a lake island and was once reached only by cable-pulled transport. Today a wooden bridge connects this small building to the shore, making it easy to access.
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