The palace was built in 1563 following the project of Paola della Stella for the wife of king Ferdinand I. It had been most often used for ceremonies and balls. Unprecedented in its elegance, the arcade with refined pillars and reliefs adds a southern touch to the palace. The grandson of Ferdinand I, Rudolph II, offered Tycho Brahe, an astronomer, to create an observatory on the palace's terrace. Johannes Kepler took Brahe's place as a court astronomer after his death and subsequently formulated his laws of planetary motion here in 1609.