Grmovje Mansion in the village of Pernovo north of Žalec was built in the sixteenth century and completely reworked in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, it houses a special social welfare institution, the Nika Pokorn Residence. However, it is not only the mansion but also the neo-Gothic chapel next to it that attracts attention with its rich and fascinating heraldic ornaments. The chapel was built in 1741 by the castellan Johann Bernard Pilpach. In the mid-nineteenth century, the subsequent owner, the Protestant Georg von Halm, reportedly wanted to demolish it, but was prevented by the authorities. In 1868, he sold Grmovje to Heinrich Count von Arco from a very ramified noble family with its origin in the Tridentine area. It is not clear why Arco, who held estates in Austrian Silesia (in Gotschdorf, modern Hošťálkovy) and Prussian Silesia (in Kopciowice), also purchased Grmovje in Lower Styria. What is known is that he was the castellan of Grmovje for only a little over three years, until he died in May 1871. Grmovje was inherited by his youngest daughter Leonia (1845–1920), who married naval Lieutenant Arthur Count Sermage (1839–1902) in Vienna three months after her father’s death. Her husband’s family originated in France. Due to its anti–Louis XIV sentiment, the family emigrated to the Habsburg provinces in the mid-seventeenth century and settled in Croatia in the early eighteenth century.
Whereas nothing is known about the first ten years of their marriage, the civil registers of the parish of Galicija reveal that their son Josef was baptized in the Grmovje castle chapel in October 1883, and their daughter Renée, later married Countess von Attems, in July 1885. Two years afterward (1887), the spouses restored the chapel in neo-Gothic style, as also indicated by the inscription, written in Gothic capitals, that encircles the chapel’s gable: CONIUGES COMES ARTHUR SERMAGE et LEONIA COMITISSA ARCO renovaverunt 1887. In the lower part of the gable is an inscription in Latin capitals, revealing that Johann Bernard Pilpach built the chapel in honor of (his patron) Saint Bernard: TIBI GLORIOSE DIVE BERNARDE IOHANNES BERNARDVS PILPACH EXTRVXIT. In the center of the gable is a beautiful relief of an angel holding the spouses’ coats of arms: to its left (or dexter side) is Count Sermage’s coat of arms (with a grazing deer, which the literature wrongfully ascribes to Pilpach), and to its right (sinister side) is the coat of arms of the Counts Arco, featuring three arches (Ital. arco ‘arch’).
Leonia Sermage sold the mansion in the early twentieth century, probably following her husband’s death in 1902 in Florence. Leonia died in 1920 in Graz.

Sources:
Curk, Jože: Gradovi in graščine v Spodnji Savinjski dolini. Savinjski zbornik, 1959, pp. 156.
Stopar, Ivan: Grajske stavbe v vzhodni Sloveniji. Knj. 3, Spodnja Savinjska dolina. Ljubljana: Park, 1992.

Links:
http://www.galicija.si/index.php?stran=zgodovina