Béla IV built the first royal residence on Castle Hill between 1247 and 1265. Sigismund enlarged it in Gothic style in the 1410s and 1420s, and Matthias Corvinus rebuilt it in early Renaissance style after 1476. The 1686 siege destroyed it when Stephen's Tower exploded.
Maria Theresa's Baroque palace began on May 13, 1749, to plans by Jean Nicolas Jadot, modified by Nicolò Pacassi, and was finished in 1769. After a fire in 1849, Josef Weiss and Carl Neuwirth rebuilt the wings in a more austere Neoclassical Baroque style. Miklós Ybl drew a master plan in 1885, Alajos Hauszmann continued it, and the palace was inaugurated in 1912.
The siege of Budapest from December 1944 to February 1945 reduced it to ruins. Interiors were ready only in the 1980s. It houses the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the National Széchényi Library.
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