It gained a national reputation in the Hungarian Reform Era, because it was in its great hall that János Spissich the Jacobin Deputy Lord-Lieutenant of Zala County started his political career, where the county’s nobility refused to rise against Napoleon Bonaparte and where, during the Reform Era, László Csány and Ferenc Deák had their debates – the latter giving his famous speech on sharing public burdens proportionately in 1843 and then returning his mandate because of his unwillingness to stand by the tax exemption of noblemen in the National Assembly.
In the centre of the square in front of the building is the statue of Deák, a work by Miklós Vay. Standing on a tall, grey granite pedestal, it was the first monument to be erected to commemorate “the wise man of the country” and was inaugurated on 1 September 1879.