Schönborn Palace (Chynadiyovo)

Schoenborn Palace stands in Mitterberg, Ukraine, and was built and developed by members of the Schönborn noble family.

On 31 July 1728 Emperor Charles VI granted the Mukachevo–Chynadiyiv estate to Lothar Franz von Schönborn. Management of the property passed to his cousin Friedrich Karl von Schönborn, who organized settlement and economic measures on the estate, encouraging German colonists and arranging tax exemptions for artisans and peasants. In 1734 the Szentmiklós, now called Chynadiyovo, castle was repaired for the Schönborns. The former Rákóczi residence in Mukacheve, known as the White Palace, underwent rebuilding and enlargement in 1746–1747 with the involvement of the architect Balthasar Neumann.

At the end of the nineteenth century the family replaced an older wooden lodge with a new hunting palace. Between 1890 and 1895 Erwein‑Friedrich von Schönborn‑Buchheim commissioned the present lodge as a purpose-built hunting estate and seasonal home. The Schönborns regularly held organised hunting parties at the estate. A chapel was introduced in the early twentieth century where originally a passage had stood.

After the First World War Transcarpathia became part of Czechoslovakia. In 1928 the Mukachevo–Chynadiyiv estate was broken up under a Czechoslovak land reform, and ownership of the hunting lodge and related holdings was transferred through the companies Bignon and Latoritsa in a transaction arranged by Count Schönborn‑Buchheim. The last family owner of the lodge, Count Georg‑Erwein von Schönborn‑Buchheim, departed Mukachevo in September 1944.

Following the Second World War the Transcarpathian region was annexed by the Soviet Union. The palace was nationalized and converted for collective use, becoming a rest house. From 1946 the building has functioned as the Karpaty sanatorium, and in 1958, after a visit by Nikita Khrushchev, the site was designated the first climatological sanatorium in Transcarpathia. From 2010 the sanatorium broadened its medical services to include musculoskeletal rehabilitation, treatment for gastrointestinal conditions, and a department for pregnancy pathology. Furniture and other interior valuables from the palace were transferred to the collections of the Uzhhorod Local History Museum. The site is registered as an architectural monument of national significance (No. 1128), and in 2011 it was held by the organization ZAT Ukrprofzdorovnytsia. The palace has also been used as a film location for productions such as The Snow Queen and Seventeen Moments of Spring. Local tradition records a legend that the building contains 366 windows, 52 rooms, and 12 entrances, with variant versions giving 365 windows or 52 chimneys.