Solliden Palace History

King Carl Gustaf himself owns only one palace. That is Solliden on Öland. All the other castles and palaces belong to the state.

The king inherited Solliden from his mother. It is here that the Royal Family spends their summers. And it is here more than anywhere else, according to the King himself, that they can live almost like a normal family. This is where the king himself spent all his summers and he has always held Solliden dearest to his heart.

The architect of Solliden Palace was Torben Grut who designed it in the “Italian style” for Crown Princess Viktoria in 1906. King Carl Gustaf recently added a modern “boat house” complete with an indoor pool.

The upkeep of Solliden is expensive. A little income is generated from the entrance fees paid by visitors who want to see the gardens and now there is even a souvenir shop at Solliden that contributes a little towards the upkeep, but the property costs the King quite a bit.

Solliden on Öland Location

Address: Sollidens Slott, Solliden, 387 22 Borgholm, Sweden. Get directions using the map provided below:

Solliden on Öland Map

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Visit The Royal Palace of Stockholm

It is hard to miss the imposing structure – 47 000 square meters – that dominates the Old Town in the center of Stockholm.

Most tourists at least walk around the enormous cubicle and through its courtyards and take a peek at the State Room and the Royal Chapel. Last year 350 000 visitors also took a tour around the state apartments or visited one of the several museums in the building.

One of the capital’s best free tourist attractions is the Changing of the Guard. You can hear the military band marching up on the Norrbro bridge to the outer Borggård courtyard with the guard unit of about 50 soldiers led by an officer of the rank.

This time-honored ritual with commands, salutes, and the soldiers marching in impressive drills has taken place here since 1523.

There has existed some kind of a fortress, controlling the waters of the Baltic and Lake Mälaren, on the site of the present Royal Palace, for about a thousand years.

Archaeologists have found traces of wooden construction and you can see other finds from the reconstruction of the House of Parliament on the Helgeandsholmen island across the Royal Palace, in the Medeltidsmuseum.

In the northern cellar of the Royal Palace of Stockholm, you can still see defense walls from the 13th century as well as rooms that served as kitchen and storage and are now part of the Tre Kronor museum. Here you can trace the evolution of the Palace from the small fortress that the founder of Stockholm, Birger Jarl constructed around 1250 to modern times.

The palace got its name Three Crowns in the 1350s when Magnus Eriksson was king over Sweden, Norway, and Scania (Skåne). When Gustav Vasa broke away from the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Norway, the Stockholm Palace became the king’s foremost residence, and it was extended, by among others the Dutch architect Willem Boy, to become an imposing renaissance castle.

In the 17th century, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger rebuilt the palace in an Italian Baroque style, that so pleased Karl XI that he had etchings made and sent to all the world’s monarchs. Ludvig XV of France was the first to send his compliments.

On May 9, 1697, a catastrophic fire started on the roof of the Royal Palace of Stockholm. The only part of the palace that was saved was Tessin’s newly built northern wing. Within weeks the architect was ready with plans for a baroque palace that was low and wide in shape instead of the tower-like old Tre Kronor.

Nicodemus Tessin (1654-1728) was the son of the architect with the same name who designed the Drottningholm Palace where the royal family now lives.

Tessin the Younger had promised that the new palace would take five years to construct, but the wars of Karl XII and the ensuing lack of funds delayed the project. The royal family had to wait for a full 50 years in a borrowed palace on the nearby island of Riddarholmen before they could move in in December 1754.

If you enter the Palace from the southern arch entrance at Slottsbacken, you have the Stockholm Palace Church on the right and the State Room on the left. In 1754 Adolf Fredrik, Lovisa Ulrika, and the 8-year-old Prince Gustav (who later became Gustav III) entered their home through this baroque church.

You can go to the Palace Church for a service every Sunday at 11 am. You will seldom see anyone from the royal family attending church. Many of the worshippers here are employees of the palace or retirees who still have an apartment at the palace.

The Stockholm Palace State Room across the entrance served as the House of Parliament until 1866 and it was also here the televised opening of parliament, with the marching Carolinian soldiers, was held until 1975.

You can see the silver throne that was a girl to Queen Kristina in 1650, and that was also used when Carl XVI Gustaf became Sweden’s king in 1973. The beautiful room is used for concerts during the summer and the King celebrated his 50th birthday here because it is more spacious than the Karl XI Gallery (page 27).

The Bernadotte Apartment on the second floor of the northern part of the Palace is a veritable museum of Sweden’s present reigning dynasty.

The Bernadotte Gallery has portraits of all Swedish kings and queens since the French Marshall Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was given the Swedish throne in 1818. Oscar II’s writing room has been very well preserved and here you can marvel at the organ he liked to play on, and such technological inventions as the electric light, installed in 1883, and the telephone from 1884.

One floor above the Bernadotte apartment lies the ballrooms that are used three to four times a year for entertaining.

The most beautiful room is Karl XI Gallery which survived the great fire and is now used for state dinners. Next door lies the “White Sea” room and the cabinet meeting room where the King meets with the government three to four times a year. Close by is also the bedroom where Gustav Ill died after the assassination at the Opera.

What makes a tour of the Stockholm Palace so interesting is all the fascinating artifacts and furniture from the time period. The rebuilding of the palace brought together some of the most talented craftspeople and artisans from Germany and France as well as different parts of Sweden. The furniture of the Ebeniste du Roi Georg Haupt and the interiors of Tessin and Hårleman by themselves make a visit to the palace more than worthwhile.

The Royal Palace also houses the Skattkammaren underground museum where the national regalia and other treasures are kept.

Adjacent to this you find the Livrustkammaren Armoury which stores the weapons, clothes, and carriages of Sweden’s historic regents. Here you can see the blue dress Crown Princess Victoria wore when she celebrated her 18th birthday and officially came of age, and Gustav II Adolf’s bloody shirt from the battle in Lützen in 1632.

You can also visit Gustav III’s hoard of sculptures from his Italian journey, kept in the Museum of Antiquities which was actually Sweden’s first public museum. Once a month you can also visit the imposing Bernadotte library which was Sweden’s public library until it was moved to the Humlegården park.

What you do not have access to in the Palace is the guest apartment where Queen Elizabeth of England and Nelson Mandela stayed.

Neither will you see the Hovförvaltningen court administration offices where the affairs of the royal family and the many palaces it administers on behalf of the Swedish state are taken care of.

The administration also runs the Slottsboden gift store selling classy souvenirs and girls in the outer courtyard. Here you find among other things, a replica of the Gripsholm china service and items made of the “Royal” Älvdalsporfyr granite.

Royal Palace of Stockholm Location

Stockholm Palace Address: Kungliga Slottet, Stockholm, Sweden. Get help with directions using the map provided below:

Royal Palace of Stockholm Map

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The Gripsholm Castle is a Swedish royal fortification and residence in Mariefred, near Stockholm.

It was begun in 1537 by King Gustav I. It is one of the finest remaining examples of Swedish architecture of the Vasa dynasty founded by Gustav, and combines sophisticated Renaissance interiors with a form that remains essentially medieval.

The site, strategic since Viking times, became more important during the Middle Ages when an estate and castle were erected in 1383 by Chancellor Bo Jonsson.

In 1472 the property was purchased by Sten Sture the Elder (1440–1503), who donated it in 1498 to a Carthusian monastery. Gustav, I seized the property in 1526, claiming the legal rights of inheritance through his kinship with Sten Sture.

The existing medieval stone keep was inadequate for Gustav, who commissioned the architect Henrik Cöllen to design a new castle, a practical fortress-refuge for the king, his family, and the royal chancery and treasury.

Defensive in nature, the Gripsholm Castle has a polygonal plan, with four massive circular towers at the angles. Built of brick, with 3–4 m thick walls surrounded by a moat, it retains a bold, severe appearance with few extraneous details, although a picturesque element is added by the irregular silhouette of towers and roofs. A painted ceiling in Halberdiers’ Hall, attributed to Anders Larsson, survives from 1543.

The year 1578 marked the completion of major restorations initiated by Duke Karl (later Karl IX), who wanted quarters to befit the position of a Renaissance king; and further alterations took place during the 1590s.

The 16th-century interiors of Gripsholm Castle are among Sweden’s greatest Renaissance treasures. In the1690s Queen Hedvig Eleonora, a great patron of art and architecture, commissioned Nicodemus Tessin to change the building substantially with the addition of a queen’s wing.

Modernization of parts of the interior was initiated by Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrika in the 1740s, and a theatre in the former church was commissioned in 1781 by Gustav III from Eric Palmstedt.

Gripsholm is now a museum and houses the National Portrait Gallery of Sweden, which is under the auspices of the National Swedish Art Museum.

Gripsholm Castle Location

Address: Gripsholms Slott 647 31 Mariefred, Sweden. Get directions using the map provided below:

Gripsholm Castle Map

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Drottningholm Palace History

The original building was destroyed by fire in 1661, right after it had been purchased by the Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora. In 1662 Nicodemus Tessin was commissioned to build a new palace in its place. The palace was completed by his son Nicodemus Tessin.

Nicodemus Tessin was also mainly responsible for the large pleasure gardens that surround Drottningholm Palace which were first planned in the 1660s. The sources of inspiration for the strictly formal layout include André Le Nôtre’s work at the châteaux of Versailles and Chantilly.

A notable feature of the garden is its rich sculptural ornament. Here Tessin had access to a large collection of bronzes by the Dutch sculptor Adriaen de Vries, which had been taken as war booty, some from the Wallenstein Palace in Prague and others from Frederiksborg Slot in Hillerød, Denmark.

The palace’s dynamic Baroque profile was radically altered by the addition of a new story to the low outer wings, which housed the Queen’s large collections of art and natural history. In 1753, the work was completed by Jean Eric Rehn, who, among other things, created the exquisite library, which beautifully combines Rococo and classical ornamentation.

The Kina Slott (Chinese Pavilion) in Drottningholm Park was created as a birthday surprise for Louisa Ulrica in 1752, but the original building was replaced between 1763 and 1769 by C. F. Adelcrantz, with assistance from Rehn.

The new building was a Rococo Maison de Plaisance of French inspiration, with Chinese influence restricted to a combination of pastiche details and authentic Chinese material in the decoration. The exception is a pair of interiors that can be associated with William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757). The pavilion’s decoration and furnishings are largely intact.

The present Drottningholm Court Theatre was also built by Adelcrantz for Louisa Ulrica after its predecessor had been burnt down in 1762. Within an unpretentious Neo-classical exterior Adelcrantz created a very personal and unconventional theatre, in which the structural plan and decoration create an intimate relationship between the very deep stage and the auditorium.

In 1777 Louisa Ulrica sold Drottningholm to the Swedish State. This resulted in various changes, including the laying out of extensive landscaped gardens around the formal garden, by order of Gustav III. These were planned in 1780 by the English-trained architect F. M. Piper.

Drottningholm was also used by the royal family during the 19th century when some of the interior was renovated. During the 1980s the palace was converted for use as the permanent residence of King Karl XVI Gustav and Queen Silvia.

Drottningholm Palace Location

The Drottningholm Palace is situated on the island of Lovön in Lake Mälaren, about 10 km west of Stockholm. Get help with directions using the map provided below:

Drottningholm Palace Map

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