Culture : Hungary’s ‘Windsor Castle’ Gets the Royal Treatment : After four decades of Communist-era abuse and neglect, Godollo Palace is being rescued with $56 million for rebuilding.

It has been 250 years since this small Baroque town outside Budapest hosted a construction project as grandiose as the one now under way. And once again the work, in a thicket of trees near the town center, involves a palace that is a poignant symbol of dramatically changing political times.

Count Antal Grassalkovich was an 18th-Century nobleman wise enough to have backed the winning side in a Hapsburg Dynasty succession struggle in which Maria Theresa became the first woman to rule the family’s vast empire. When the Austrian empress rewarded Grassalkovich’s loyalty by granting him the town of Godollo, the count turned the sleepy wayside into a center of Hungarian aristocratic life.

Grassalkovich erected an elegant palace amid the pine and chestnut trees. The ambitious undertaking took more than a decade and required moving the village church to make way for the commanding residence itself, said to be second in size in Europe only to Versailles. Ornate quarters were set aside for visits by the empress.

But today the red marble and gold leaf in what was Maria Theresa’s room are barely visible. Layers of dirt and grease are so thick that it is hard to imagine the quarters were ever fit for a queen. The wood floor, rotten from years of disrepair, has been reduced to a carpet of dirt and rubble.

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Down the hallway, workers in dusty overalls and caps have erected a labyrinth of scaffolding from floor to ceiling. On top, they slowly chip away at Sequoia-sized wooden beams riddled with dry rot, a fungus that has destroyed most of the castle’s two-story frame. The rotten wood is being sold to artists, who salvage the best pieces to paint religious icons.

“The place is in such terrible condition that we really have to start from zero,” said Geza Horvath, director of sales and marketing for the Royal Palace Godollo Society for Public Use, a foundation established to raise money for the work. “But there is a tremendous feeling that this castle needs to be saved, that we have to keep our history alive.”

The present-day Godollo construction project is in fact a colossal reconstruction, a $56-million rescue of one of Hungary’s most historic palaces, which otherwise might have faced the wrecking ball after four decades of Communist-era abuse and neglect.

Istvan Juhasz, an adviser to the Hungarian Tourist Board, which oversees reconstruction of castles throughout the country, said the post-World War II ruin of Godollo was deliberate. While other palaces were set aside as museums or even sold to private companies during reforms in the 1980s, Godollo was left by Communist authorities to die a slow and painful death.

“The palace fell victim to the politics of the Iron Curtain,” Juhasz said. “The Communist government very much wanted to undo the ties between Hungary and [the West], and the palace was a symbol of the good memories of our history and Hungary’s position in Europe.”

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In 1948, the Soviet military commandeered the castle for an army base and removed mention of it from local maps and official tourist publications. The Soviets gave town officials permission to use one wing of the U-shaped residence as a nursing home and a shelter for homeless people. Otherwise, access to the grounds was strictly controlled.

“For almost two generations, people forgot about it,” said Horvath, 27, who saw the palace for the first time after the fall ofcommunism in Hungary in 1989. “I learned the history in school but had no idea where the castle was. It was a secret place, and we were forbidden to visit it.”

The Soviets erected some rickety outbuildings but did little to improve or maintain the 75-acre estate during their four-decade occupation. Soldiers cut huge chunks from intricate wrought-iron gates in the horse stables to allow for better storage. Red marble pillars were splashed with thick gray paint. Aging buildings were allowed to fall into such disrepair that the roof of the riding hall--then the main barracks for several hundred Soviet troops--collapsed in 1985.

In the makeshift nursing home, chimneys for coal stoves were carved into walls, and water and sewage pipes were crudely fastened over gold-leaf trimmings and centuries-old frescoes, some still faintly detectable beneath the dirt and paint. Several hallways, including a secret staircase, were bricked shut to install toilets.

Ironically, Godollo’s unlucky past under communism has become its greatest asset under capitalism. The Hungarian government has set aside $1.6 million to begin the reconstruction and, for the first time, has created a profit-making public foundation to help raise building funds. The Royal Palace Godollo Society has been given the authority to hold fashion shows, wedding receptions, conferences and other private functions at the palace--so long as all profits are reinvested in the property.

“Authorities are determined to make the palace a symbol of the changes in Hungary,” Juhasz said.

Work is scheduled to be finished in five years. By then, officials expect to have created an elite resort where wealthy Europeans will stay in privately owned apartments, business people will attend conferences in the refurbished riding hall and tourists will visit a maze of rooms and halls restored to their original splendor.

Plans also call for construction of a luxury hotel on a meadow behind the palace; an investor is still being sought.

By saving Godollo, Hungarians hope to save a quarter-millennium of history that began with Maria Theresa’s first visit in 1751.

During the Napoleonic Wars half a century later, members of the Hapsburg family fled Vienna and went into hiding at Godollo.

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By 1848, the palace had become a hotbed of the revolutionary sentiment that was sweeping Europe. Count Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian independence leader, plotted the overthrow of the Hapsburgs from Godollo, but his plan failed the next year.

Two decades later, after the Grassalkovich family had fallen upon hard times, the Hungarian government bought the palace from a consortium of banks. It was designated as the Hungarian royal residence of the newly established Austro-Hungarian Empire, the so-called Dual Monarchy that brought new prosperity to the country that lasted until the onset of onset of World War I.

Throughout the late 19th Century, Emperor Francis Joseph and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, the last of the Hapsburg rulers, made Godollo their favorite getaway from Vienna--turning it into the Windsor Castle of the Austro-Hungarian domain and endearing Elizabeth, the most frequent visitor, to the Hungarian people.

The royal period was the palace’s most glorious, but the building’s significance outlasted the Hapsburgs.

In 1919, leaders of a failed Communist revolution made their headquarters in Godollo before fleeing the country. The following year, the palace moved back to the center of diplomatic life when it became the summer residence of the Hungarian head of state, Adm. Miklos Horthy, until 1944.

Today, if you squint your eyes, ignore the rumble of passing traffic and excuse the decades of neglect underfoot, you can imagine what Godollo was like during its better years. A lot of people are apparently doing just that, Horvath said, and are being moved to help restore its faded beauty.

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Since word of the reconstruction has spread, hundreds of pieces of antique furniture--some of them valuable palace furnishings that had been stolen or sold over the years--have been returned to the foundation by people across Hungary, Horvath said.

“This castle has already stood here 250 years,” he said. “People want it to be eternal.”