County palace – Turistička zajednica grada Križevci

Among the public buildings that were erected in northern Croatia in the second half of the 18th century for the needs of the reorganized state administration, a prominent place belongs to the representative county palace in Križevci.

The palace occupies the east side of the main street of Križevci, the old historical communication that once connected the southern and northern city gates, and with its elegant volume, right where the street slightly bends and opens to view, represents, together with the strong volume of the church of St. Ana and the Pauline monastery on the opposite side of the street, the main spatial backbone of the center of Križevci. The dimensions and position of the county palace clearly show the strong connection between the city and the county administration, which for many centuries gave a special stamp to the social life of Križevci.

At first glance, it is clear that this harmonious one-storey building with unusually elongated facades was not created at once. The unequal distance between the window openings, the different lengths of the side facades and the asymmetry of the courtyard wings clearly show that the complex of the county palace as it is today was formed in several construction phases. The majority of the works, as already mentioned, were carried out in 1779/80, when the palace took its present appearance with a pronounced symmetry of the street facade, dominated by a prominent central projection, and two vertical courtyard wings, which gave the whole a typical Baroque “U” floor plan.

The building as a whole acts more with its mass and dimensions (it is 60 m long and has a total of 21 window axes) than with the architectural details, which were lost during later adaptations, especially on the spacious facades. The county palace in its present form was built gradually in several construction phases from the mid-18th century to the 1930s, in the span of about eighty years. It has already been pointed out that its oldest core is the former Gladki house, which the county bought (1772) from the wife (nee Gladki) of the Križevci deputy mayor Juraj Petričević.