Sándor-Metternich mansion

The Sándor-Metternich mansion (Hungarian: Sándor–Metternich-kastély) is a classicist manor in Bajna in Esztergom County, Hungary.

Count Menyhért Sándor (1661-1723), deputy-lieutenant of the Esztergom county, erected a hunting lodge on the site of the current mansion and surrounded it by a game garden.

Count Antal Sándor (1734-1788) replaced the lodge with a manor house, which was completed in 1776 when archbishop József Batthyány consecrated the mansion's chapel.

[2] As he wanted to present her with a mansion worthy to her status, he started to transform the manor house into a fifty-nine room palace a year before the marriage (1834).

In addition to inlaid stucco created by Maria Piazza, the walls were decorated with paintings of Sándor familu members, antlers, hunting trophies and gilded mirrors.

He changed his surname to Metternich-Sándor, and lived in Bajna up to 1940, where he attended primary school and served in the Hungarian army.

[3] Due to the troubles after the Second World War, princess Clementine had to abandon the Bajna mansion and its estateds, and she left Hungary in 1947.

As nothing materialized, the palace stood empty for years, deprived of all its splendor, it began to decline and the gardens and the park overgrown.

[4] It has been opened for visitors with an interactive exhibition focused on count Móric Sándor and his daughter Pauline von Metternich.