The first real works on the castle walls began in 1887, and they belong to a fashion rather than to a war. Austria-Hungary's rich were rebuilding medieval ruins as romantic country houses all over the monarchy — another Pálffy, Count Ján, was doing exactly that at Bojnice between 1889 and 1910, and Count Wilczek had rebuilt Kreuzenstein near Vienna in the same spirit. What these owners wanted was not the Middle Ages as it had been, but the Middle Ages as the nineteenth century imagined it: towers, crenellations, steep roofs, comfort inside. Smolenice was designed to be exactly that.Prvé skutočné práce na hradbách sa začali roku 1887 a patria skôr do dejín módy než do dejín vojen. Bohatí ľudia Rakúsko-Uhorska vtedy po celej monarchii prestavovali stredoveké zrúcaniny na romantické vidiecke sídla — iný Pálfi, gróf Ján, robil presne to isté v rokoch 1889 – 1910 v Bojniciach a gróf Wilczek v tom istom duchu obnovil Kreuzenstein pri Viedni. Títo majitelia nechceli stredovek taký, aký naozaj bol, ale taký, ako si ho predstavovalo 19. storočie: veže, cimburie, strmé strechy a pohodlie vnútri. Smolenický zámok mal byť presne týmto.
