After 1714, the whole of Constantin Brancoveanu’s wealth was confiscated, and all inner valuable goods the palace possessed (furniture, carpets, silvery, books, a.s.o.) were dissipated. Years later, prince’s estates and palaces were redeemed from the Turks by the following voivode, Stefan Cantacuzino. In 1714, Mogosoaia Palace was changed into an inn. Aubry de la Montraye, the French traveller who visited the place and lived inside on October 14, 1714, put down a beautiful description of the building: “… at about 7 o’clock, we passed by a pretty big and grand edifice. We asked the guide what it might be. The man answered it had been a palace called Mogosoaia, built by the late Wallachia’s ruler. We were curious to enter and see it; we found it very even, built in European manner and adorned inside with rich ceilings and good painting, but the Porte’s employees had taken the furniture after its unhappy owner had been dethroned. The palace was afterwards changed into an inn for travellers’ needs.”
Three years later, in 1717, Mogosoaia Palace was returned to Constantin Brancoveanu’s descendants, set free from the exile the Turks imposed them at Kütahya, in Asia Minor. In 1719, the palace sheltered for some time voivode Nicolae Mavrocordat, who, fearing the plague that was ravaging Bucharest, settled his residence there, invited by Maria Brancoveanu, the widow of the former ruling prince. As Stefan Brancoveanu, the second of voivode’s sons, for whom the palace had been built, had no direct male heirs (his only daughter, Maria, died in 1773), the descendants of the ruler’s first-born son, Constantin, inherited the place until the beginning of the 19th century.
After Maria Brancoveanu’s death (December 1729), the palace was inherited by the great ban Constantin Brancoveanu (1707-1762), voivode’s grandson. His descendant, Nicolae (1730-18 January 1804), a great ban himself, became its further owner. During the Russian-Turkish War (1769-1764), he sided with Russians, a fact that aroused Turks’ revenge: they played havoc with the palace. It was Nicolae Brancoveanu who – according to the Austrian historian F.J. Sulzer, in 1781 a visitor of Mogosoaia – demolished the vaulted ceiling of the hall in which his ancestors’ portraits were painted and replaced it with a plain one. Nicolae Brancoveanu’s son, called also Constantin, dying at a young age (May 1772), the palace was inherited by his brother, the great ban Manolache Brancoveanu (1748-25 April 1811), who continued the history of the family. Its last direct heir and owner was Grigore Brancoveanu (1767-27 April 1832).
In March 1821, fearing Tudor Vladimirescu’s host marching towards Bucharest, Grigore Brancoveanu abandoned the palace and took refuge in Brasov. The pandours occupied the palace, and the fire that followed destroyed its interiors anew. In 1832, the last offspring of the Brancoveanus died too. Since he and his wife, Elisabeta Bals, had no descendants, on March 16, 1824, they adopted Zoe Mavrocordat (1805-1892), Alexandru Mavrocordat and Catrina Bals’ daughter.
