Verkiai is a former estate of the bishops of Vilnius, with a villa rustica (country villa) type residence next to the farm buildings. Today it is a picturesque, distant suburb of Vilnius.

The Verkiai estate was granted in 1387 by Wladyslaw Jagiello to the bishops of Vilnius as their endowment. From the very beginning, they were seen as an economic base, at which a wooden manor house was erected to serve as a resting place. It served this function especially under Bishop Eustachy Vollovich, who transformed it into an exclusive country villa perched on the lofty banks of the Neris River, and under Konstantin Casimir Brzostowski, who before 1700 erected a small brick palace in Verkiai in the shape of a castellum.

In 1779, with the consent of the Sejm, Bishop Ignacy Massalski took over Verkiai, giving the family estate of Czerwony Dwór near Nemunas to the Bishop of Vilnius in return. In Verkiai, the bishop planned to set up an estate for Duke Charles Joseph de Linge (1759-1792), husband of his niece Helena Apolonia (1763-1815). As a well-educated and wealthy man, he wanted not only to match the best members of the political and social elite of the time, but also to endow the family with a permanent place of prominence in the Republic.

When embarking on the project, Ignacy Massalski decided to erect the residence on a lofty hill with a distant view of the river and the town in a wooded area. Construction was started by Marcin Knackfus (1740-1821), but in 1780 Wawrzyniec Gucewicz (1753-1798) took over, strongly criticising the work of his predecessor and teacher. This was the time when the less than 27-year-old architect returned from his studies in Paris, enamoured of the solutions there.

By 1794, Wawrzyniec Gucewicz had completed the entire grandiose ensemble, which consisted of the palace and two detached outbuildings, as well as numerous outbuildings (stables and coach houses, a lower mill, a waterworks building, an administration house and servants' houses). The buildings with their subdued, austere classicist forms, together with the free park composition, formed an ensemble of high artistic rank. The park surrounding the buildings was also connected with the paths of the Calvary of Vilnius, founded in 1662 by Bishop Jerzy Bialozor.

The most representative building was of course the two-storey palace itself, with a projecting central risalit and a six-column Ionic portico with a tympanum and two side porticoes. The central part of the palace on the garden side was topped with a dome. This is where the grand ballroom, also used for theatre performances, was located. The palace was decorated with sculptures depicting, among other things, country work. The main tympanum depicted a paragon of civic virtue, the Roman senator Cincinnatus ploughing the fields with oxen. This is so characteristic because Bishop Ignacy Massalski was a controversial and ambiguous figure. Associated with the Commission of National Education, a haggard, accused of treason, he was hanged in the Old Town Square in Warsaw during the Kościuszko Uprising. His family and supporters were then relegated to political oblivion, which was also linked to the collapse of the Verkiai seat. Already in 1788, her husband was abandoned by Helena Apolonia de Linge, who married Wincenty Potocki (1749-1825).

In 1840, the residence was bought by Ludwig Sayn-Wittgenstein (1799-1866). On his instructions, the Swiss architect Bernard Simon demolished the palace in 1845, and from the material thus obtained extended the eastern outbuilding by adding one hall and a tower, and a cast-iron orangery. This building became the Wittgenstein palace proper.