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Drottningholm Palace
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How it came to be
The name Drottningholm means Queen's Islet. In 1580 John III of Sweden built a stone palace on the island of Lovön in Lake Mälaren, near Stockholm, for his queen Catherine Jagiellon. The queen dowager Hedwig Eleonora bought it in 1661, but it burned down on 30 December that year. From 1662 the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder rebuilt it, and after his death in 1681 his son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger completed the interiors.
In 1744 the palace was given to Louisa Ulrika of Prussia on her marriage to the Swedish crown prince Adolf Frederick. On her birthday, 24 July 1753, her husband, by then king, surprised her with a Chinese-style pavilion in the park. The wooden pavilion soon decayed and was replaced in 1763 to 1769 by the present building designed by Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz. The court theatre burned during a performance on 27 August 1762, and Adelcrantz's replacement opened in 1766.
According to UNESCO it is the only surviving 18th-century theatre whose original stage machinery is still regularly used. After Louisa Ulrika's son Gustav III was assassinated in 1792, the theatre became a store for unused furniture. In 1921 the theatre historian Agne Beijer preserved what remained of its interior and machinery, and it reopened on 19 August 1922. Since 1981 King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia have lived in the southern wing of the palace, and the royal domain was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1991.
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