A new home for a military dignitary
The palace was built after 1890 by Field Marshal Georg Georgievits de Apadia, who decided to spend the autumn of his life in the new palace. The opportunity to build it was given to local architect Ignác Fiegler Jr., according to the design of an unknown Viennese architect.
The noble palace was built for 300,000 crowns and its eclectic style is confirmed by neo-baroque and neo-rococo elements in the facade, vestibule and representative rooms on the first floor. The palace boasted a terraced garden, landscaped as a park. It originally extended as far as the Palisades and also contained rare exotic plants.
Georgievits died in 1909 and was buried in the nearby cemetery at the Goat Gate. His widow, Baroness Matilda, decided to move out of the city and sell the palace in 1912. She offered it at a discounted price to the municipality, which had expressed interest in the palace and wanted to house the city library, museum, and open the garden to the public as a small botanical garden, but the plan fell through.
Financier Trebitsch and a tribute to his wife
The palace was eventually bought by a financier of Jewish origin, Dionýz Trebitsch, then director of the Hungarian General Credit Bank. However, he lived in the new home with his wife, the famous singer Olga, only for a short time, because she died of the Spanish flu. He combined his love of art with his love for his late wife and had a monument and fountain built in her honor, known as Cantus. It was carved from marble around 1921 by the famous sculptor Alojz Rigele. Later, when the garden was sold, it was acquired by the city as a gift and for many years it was placed in the Janko Kráľ Park.
Trebitsch loved art and surrounded himself with artists, and he apparently rented out a part of the palace to high-ranking politicians and financiers, such as the then director of the Slovak Bank. The garden was divided into plots and sold in the early 1920s for unknown reasons. At its northern end, the Cubist Apartment House for Employees of the Czech Chamber of Industry was built in 1925 by architect František Kříž. Trebitsch eventually remarried and moved out of Bratislava permanently.
Headquarters of associations and embassies
Until the 1930s, the palace housed several charitable, social and health associations and institutions, such as the Masonic association Philanthropy, the association Záchrana for the Protection of Women and Girls, the local association of the Czechoslovak Red Cross, the Abstinence Association, and the State Social Welfare Instructors' Office in Slovakia.
During World War II, in 1940, the palace was used for the first time in its history.
for diplomatic purposes, the Italian Royal Embassy moved in.
At the end of the war, the palace temporarily housed part of the Red Army headquarters. After the war, the Bulgarian Christ Botev Elementary School operated in the palace for several decades. Since the early 90s, it has shared the palace with the oldest elementary art school in Bratislava, the Miloš Ruppeldt Elementary School. The latter was founded in 1919 as the Music School for Slovakia and moved from Františkánske námestie to the palace, where it is still located today.
Cantus in its original place
After a partial reconstruction of the palace in 2009, the central hall was named the Olga Trebitsch Concert Hall, and her monument was returned to its original place in the courtyard. The extensive reconstruction of the Georgievits Palace to its current form began in 2022, and after its opening, it will continue to be the home of the Miloš Ruppelt Elementary School. The second part of the palace, the House of Music, will become a new cultural facility for musical and other cultural events under the leadership of the Bratislava Cultural and Information Center.
