There once was a Prince Archbishop of Salzburg named Leopold Anton Eleutherius Freiherr von Firmian, who was a descendant of a century-old, South Tyrolean noble family. In 1736 he named his newly acquired property LEOPOLDSKRON, a combination of his first name Leopold and the second part of "Mezzocorone", his home town, which translated into "Krone", the German world for "crown".

Although Firmian was highly educated in the sciences and had a fine appreciation for art, he was nevertheless responsible for the expulsion of 22,000 Protestants from Salzburg, which greatly harmed his family’s reputation. Thus he instructed the Scottish Benedictine monk Bernhard Stuart to design the rococo-palace as a prestigious family residence in an effort to partially restore the family’s social standing.