Bombed during the Second World War and demolished in 1960, the palace was one of the centres of cultural life in Vienna in the early 20th century. The seat of the famous collector "spread a fairy-tale splendour", as the Austrian press wrote. The entire first floor was dedicated to the display of works of art.

"The Neo-Baroque palace, located in the so-called diplomatic quarter, where the English, German and Russian embassies were based, in the immediate vicinity of the Belvedere, was a meeting place for the Viennese and international intellectual elite of the 19th and early 20th centuries" (J. Winiewicz-Wolska).

On 16 February 1902, the palace was inaugurated, followed a few months later by a grand reception for art lovers, honoured by a lecture by the well-known writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal; in the same year, the Count published a guide to his palace, distributed to guests. The residence and its collections were not open to the public, but Karol Lanckoroński's open manner, the concerts and scientific discussions held there meant that it was known to a very wide audience. He erected the palace at the height of his career as a patron and collector, as "a framework for works of art of past eras", as he wrote. He himself chose the architectural designs for the palace and imposed them on the architects: it was to be Austrian late Baroque. These were, in fact, the designs that the Fellner and Helmer company was most likely to use, for example in the Rotschild Palace in Vienna and the Kasyn Noble in Lvov, which were built at the same time. The gardens of the palace bordered on the Baroque gardens of the Belvedere. From the street the palace was preceded by a driveway with two magnificent gates in the fence, the grilles of which also referred to the 18th century design.

The rooms of the first floor, the so-called Kunsträume, housed the collections of antiquities and early paintings from the Lanckoronski collection, one of the largest in Vienna. The paintings were arranged according to national schools and the entire collection was arranged in a museum-like manner. A large part of the collection was saved during and after the Second World War and came to Poland at the end of the 20th century thanks to the bequest of the count's daughter, the art historian Karolina.