Story
The story of Drottningholm Palace
The name Drottningholm means "Queen's islet", and it comes from an earlier stone palace that King John III built here in 1580 for his queen, Catherine Jagiellon. That building met a dramatic end. The Queen Dowager Hedwig Eleonora bought it in 1661, and on 30 December of that same year it burnt to the ground.
She engaged the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, and in 1662 work began on the palace you see today. Tessin died in 1681 with the castle almost complete, and his son, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, finished the elaborate interiors. Hedwig Eleonora, who headed the regency for the young King Charles XI, used it as a summer residence until her death in 1715. In 1744 the palace was given as a gift to Louisa Ulrika of Prussia on her marriage, and she transformed its rooms in French rococo style.
Today it is the residence of the Swedish royal family and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1991.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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