Built for purely defensive purposes between 1593 and 1598 on the initiative of Carl Zengraf, Secretary of the Provincial States, and elevated to noble status in 1594 by the will of Archduke Ferdinand, the palace was then located on the immediate outskirts of Gorizia, in an area later called “Graffenberth” or “Grofinperch” and later “Grafenberg”, a name retained by the cadastral surveys of the 18th and 19th centuries. The design, attributed to Giulio Cesare Baldigara, a military architect who worked mainly in Hungary and Transylvania, and who had overseen the ‘factory’ of the Capuchin monastery in Gorizia between 1591 and 1596, evoked the austere stylistic features of the house-fortress rather than the harmonious and elegant designs of the Venetian villas.
In 1614, when the Zengraf family line came to an end, the residence passed into the hands of the Counts Strassoldo, from Friuli, who modified the structure according to the typical model of the stately home, giving it an architectural definition very similar to that which we see today. In 1643, an aristocratic chapel was built overlooking the palace and connected to it by a double loggia, followed in the 17th and early 19th century by the construction of the stables, located at the edge of the property, and the chancery adjacent to the chapel, which today houses the offices of the Palazzo Coronini Cronberg Foundation.
On 7 October 1820, all real estate and jurisdictional rights attached to the name of Grafenberg were acquired by Count Michele Coronini Cronberg (1793-1876). In the following years, Michele Coronini devoted himself to the renovation of the palace with the addition of a wing at one of the two 16th-century avant-corps. In October 1836, when the exiled King of France, Charles X of Bourbon, decided to move with his court to Gorizia, he chose the Coronini mansion as his residence. It was a short and unfortunate stay because less than a month after his arrival, the king contracted cholera and died within days. His remains were buried in the nearby monastery of Castagnevizza.
The complex did not undergo any other significant transformations until the closing decades of the 19th century, when Michele's nephew, Alfredo Coronini (1846-1920), landscaped the grounds surrounding the palace, creating a large English-style park, embellished with statues and architectural elements. However, his son Carlo had to deal with the damage caused by the bombings during the First World War. In the intervening years between the wars, the palace was rented out and became the headquarters of an Italian army command. After 8 September 1943, it was taken over by the German troops that had occupied Gorizia. Later becoming the headquarters of a Yugoslav partisan command and then of the allied troops, it was not until the early 1950s that the palace was returned to the Coronini family, who settled there permanently, making it their main residence. To prevent the estate from being split up in the absence of direct heirs, the last descendants of the lineage, Count Guglielmo (1905-1990) and his sister Nicoletta (1896-1984), wanted to have the family residence given museum status and be entrusted to a foundation. Their wishes, clearly stated in their respective wills, were implemented after Guglielmo's death in Vienna on 13 September 1990.
