Palm House of the Royal Palace of Gödöllő (Pálmaház)

The palace at Gödöllő, formerly the Grassalkovich residence, was bought by the state in 1867 and placed at the disposal of Franz Joseph I and Elisabeth as a coronation gift. It was in that setting, in the queen's time, that a two-wing palm house rose in the upper park in 1870, described on the palace's own website as modern and well equipped.

The building stands in the Reservé-kert, a pre-cultivation garden laid out south of the chestnut avenue, where plants for the park were raised and whose south-west corner held a tree nursery. Beside the palm house came gardeners' dwellings and, in 1895, a heated glasshouse. According to the present operator, horticultural life on the site continued until the Second World War.

From 1950 Soviet units were stationed in the palace; the palm house lay within the area they used, and by the 1990s its condition had completely deteriorated, the palace says. The operator describes it as already abandoned and ruined in the 1980s. The palace dates to 1997 the renovation after which the building worked again as a nursery; the operator, for its part, presents a restoration carried out by the company Lyra Florae Kft., which returned the building and its surroundings to their former appearance, and the business, named Pálmaház Kertészet és Herbárium, opened on 29 August 2015. Neither source details the works, nor says whether this is one project dated differently or two successive phases.

The palm house is a two-wing building (kétszárnyú). The palace website describes an iron-framed structure made on Austrian models; a visitor site speaks of a cast-iron structure and, having compared the building with the Palmenhaus of the Vienna Hofburg, calls it a much smaller version of it, which remains a visitor's impression. A tourism article refers to a double-winged, glass-covered structure of western design.

The operator states that the building is heritage-protected, without giving the listing, and puts the indoor area of the business at 432 m² against about 5,700 m² of outdoor space. The 2015 restoration aimed, in its words, to combine the historic character of the place with present-day needs. The left wing is now a glasshouse for houseplants; the right wing, fitted out in a Baroque style, houses the herbarium. On the collaborative OpenStreetMap, the building is recorded with two storeys.

The place is not a botanical garden: the plants are those of a garden centre. The left-wing glasshouse offers houseplants, foliage and flowering plants, orchids and large specimen plants; one visitor also reports three resident tortoises. Outside, the nursery sells trees, shrubs, conifers and evergreens, fruit trees, herbs and balcony fruit trees, with a wide choice of trees from the Royal Palace park. Six model gardens in different styles are on show.

The herbarium in the right wing sells handmade teas, jams, syrups, spices and cosmetics, most of whose raw materials can be bought at the nursery. A traditional Christmas market, with decorated fir trees in the herbarium, opens in early November; the 2025 edition began on 8 November.

The palm house stands in the upper park of the Royal Palace; it can be reached from the park as well as directly from the street (Martinovics Ignác utca 2/A), and visitors may go in to browse or to buy, according to a visitor site. Half an hour is enough for the garden centre and the herbarium.

The visit combines naturally with the Royal Palace, Queen Elisabeth's residence, and its 26-hectare park, whose forecourts and upper park have been a nature reserve since 1998 and hold century-old trees, including a ginkgo and a giant sequoia. In early November the Christmas market gives the building a festive air; in spring, children's gardening programmes are held there.