A Ruined Hungarian Palace—Rescued

In 1998,

Gyöngyi Perényi,

now 52 years old and the owner of two Budapest restaurants, bought the derelict property with her then-husband from the Hungarian government for 65 million forints, or about $260,000. The reconstruction into a single-family mansion was completed in 2000.

The property now consists of the ornate mansion, a 5,300-square-foot annex, a heated outdoor pool and a bucolic artificial lake. All are part of a 5½-acre private park. Ágnes Mezei of Engel & Völkers is handling the sale.

The three-level main house has three large bedroom suites. A basement, where livestock were possibly kept, now has a home gym, a sauna and a tanning salon. The annex, formerly housing stables and a blacksmith’s workshop, now has staff rooms, a guest apartment and a large party room.

Ms. Perényi shares the home with her daughter, Vanessa, 25, and their two Chihuahuas and a Pomeranian. Her older daughter, Nikoletta, 28, regularly visits.

The palace’s main entrance leads to the second floor, which has a salon, kitchen, dining room and large master suite. The daughters’ bedroom suites are on the first floor, on opposite sides of a family room with a home cinema.

In the decades before she bought the property, says Ms. Perényi, the home was “unoccupied, unguarded and exposed to vandalism.” She adds: “There were no windows, no doors, no flooring, no plumbing, no electricity. And the garden was a garbage dump.”

The roof and the main walls survived, but little else, so the restoration had to start from scratch. “It was like we were building a new house,” she adds.

The property may have been in poor condition, but it was a landmark. Its status meant the couple’s best option was to drop their plan to create office space and turn the building into a new family home.

Ms. Perényi says she got inspiration for the décor from visiting the Festetics Palace in the small city of Keszthely, ancestral home of Count

János Festetics,

the man who originally built her palace. She also visited Gödöllő Palace, north of Budapest, which once belonged to the Habsburg crown.

Budapest art historian István Bibó has investigated the site and says it was built between 1792 and 1796 by the count, likely as a hunting lodge. The count went on to buy several smaller pieces of land to create “an imposing residence.”

The Festetics family belonged to the highest ranks of Hungary’s nobility, says Howard Lupovitch, associate professor of history at Detroit’s Wayne State University and a scholar of 19th-century Hungary. He said the family had close ties to Austria’s Habsburg monarchy, which ruled Hungary until the end of World War I.

In 1797, János’s brother, György, established one of Europe’s first agricultural colleges, which helped make 19th-century Hungary an agricultural superpower. János’s nephew, politician and writer

István Széchenyi,

is a national hero. The two possibly visited the hunting lodge, says

Ágnes Benedek,

an amateur historian specializing in the lore of eastern Budapest.

After the death of the count, and then his wife, the estate ended up in the hands of the family’s lawyer, György Zsivora, starting in the 1850s.

Far to the east of the growing city, the estate contained a vast working farm. Already in decline by 1900, and damaged during World War II, it became “a rough-and-ready housing facility,” says Ms. Benedek. In the 1970s, the palace was uninhabited, and its surroundings had been become a de facto public park. By that point, many called the ruin “the Gisela Castle,” she says, believing it was the spot where Gisela of Hungary, queen consort to Hungary’s 11th-century king and patron saint, Stephen, had visited. There is no evidence the story is true, she says.

Ms. Perényi says she felt lucky to find local craftsmen who could create versions of classic stucco decorations, and to source 18th-century-style chandeliers in Bohemia in the Czech Republic. “We tried to restore it to its original period, but it wasn’t easy,” she says, adding that the process was “challenging but not exactly fun.”

She says she is selling because her children are grown, and she is considering a modern home.