Strömsholm Palace, sometimes called Strömsholm Castle , is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 royal palace. The baroque palace is built on the site of a fortress from the 1550s, located on an island in the Kolbäcksån river

Kolbäcksån river

Kolbäcksån is a river located in Bergslagen in the middle of Sweden. It is about 180 kilometres long, arises in the province Dalarna and flows through the province of Västmanland into the Mälaren. The river drains an area of approximately 3.100 km ² and has an average discharge of 27 m³/sec...

 at the west end of Lake Mälaren. The palace has interiors from the 18th century and an important collection of Swedish paintings.

History

King Gustav Vasa

Gustav I of Sweden

Gustav I of Sweden, born Gustav Eriksson of the Vasa noble family and later known simply as Gustav Vasa , was King of Sweden from 1523 until his death....

 had a fortress built at Strömsholm in the 1550s. This later provided the foundation for the present Strömsholm Palace, built in 1669-1674 for Queen Hedvig Eleonora

Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp

Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp was the queen consort of King Charles X of Sweden and queen mother of King Charles XI...

 to a design by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder

Nicodemus Tessin the Elder

Nicodemus Tessin the Elder was an important Swedish architect.-Biography:Nicodemus Tessin was born in Stralsund in Pomerania and came to Sweden as a young man. There he met and worked with the architect Simon de la Vallée...

. The palace consists of a central building framed by four square corner towers. On the park side, there is a large, dome

Dome

A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....

d central tower. Around 20 estate buildings were erected at the same time as the palace, and the first stages of a park in the French baroque style were laid out.

Work on the interiors came to a halt when the building's fabric was completed. Not until the 1730s was the first phase of interior work carried out, including a palace chapel

Chapel

A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...

 in the attic designed by the Swedish architect Carl Hårleman

Carl Hårleman

Baron Carl Hårleman was a Swedish architect.Hårleman was born in Stockholm, son of the garden architect and head of the royal parks and gardens Johan Hårleman, who hade been ennobled in 1698, and began his architectural training under Göran Josua Adelcrantz...

. The interiors at Strömsholm Palace are largely Gustavian in style. In 1766 the heir to the Swedish throne, later King Gustav III

Gustav III of Sweden

Gustav III was King of Sweden from 1771 until his death. He was the eldest son of King Adolph Frederick and Queen Louise Ulrica of Sweden, she a sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia....

, married Princess Sophia Magdalena of Denmark

Sophia Magdalena of Denmark

Sofia Magdalena of Denmark and Norway was a Queen consort of Sweden as the spouse of Gustav III of Sweden....

. As a wedding present from the Swedish Riksdag

Parliament of Sweden

The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...

, she was given Strömsholm Palace. Extensive interior works commenced, under the architectural direction of Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz

Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz

Carl Fredrik Adelcrantz was a Swedish architect and civil servant. Adelcrantz's style developed from a rococo influenced by Carl Hårleman, the leading architect in Sweden in the early years of his career, to a classical idiom influenced by the stylistic developments in France in the mid-to-late...

, and continued into the 19th century. The queen's bedchamber is a prime example of Swedish interior design

Interior design

Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...

 from the start of the Gustavian era, as well as the Chinese dining room with its fabric-covered walls with Chinese style paintings done by the renowned tapestry painter Lars Bolander.

The palace also houses an important collection of Swedish paintings from the 17th century, amongst others David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl was a Swedish nobleman and portrait painter.Ehrenstrahl was born in Hamburg. In 1652, at twenty-four years of age, at the request of Carl Gustaf Wrangel, he moved to Skokloster Castle, from his art studies in the Netherlands...

's paintings of King Charles XII's

Charles XI of Sweden

Charles XI also Carl, was King of Sweden from 1660 until his death, in a period in Swedish history known as the Swedish empire ....

 horses. Since the 16th century, Strömsholm has been an equestrian center of Sweden. In the 1550s, King Gustav Vasa reinforced the importance of horses here, by raising horses for Sweden´s army

Swedish Armed Forces

The Swedish Armed Forces is a Swedish Government Agency responsible for the operation of the armed forces of the Realm. The primary task of the agency is to train, organize and to deploy military forces, domestically and abroad, while maintaining the long-term ability to defend the Realm in the...

. The Strömsholm Riding School was a part of the Swedish Army from 1868 to 1968. Today, Strömsholm is used as a hippodrome, where equestrian competitions

Horse racing

Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...

 are held each year.

In 1985, the palace underwent major renovation

Renovation

Renovation is the process of improving a structure. Two prominent types of renovations are commercial and residential.-Process:The process of a renovation, however complex, can usually be broken down into several processes...

 of its facade

Facade

A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

. Over the years, the exterior had undergone various alterations, but the plasterwork

Plasterwork

Plasterwork refers to construction or ornamentation done with plaster, such as a layer of plaster on an interior wall or plaster decorative moldings on ceilings or walls. This is also sometimes called pargeting...

 as originally applied in the 1670s was largely intact. The roof was covered with tar

Tar

Tar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...

 shingle

Roof shingle

Roof shingles are a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements. These elements are typically flat rectangular shapes laid in rows from the bottom edge of the roof up, with each successive higher row overlapping the joints in the row below...

s until the 19th century, when these were replaced with tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

. The palace was restored in stages during the 1990s. The disposition of the rooms in the royal apartments was restored, and the 18th-century furnishings were placed in the correct context. One of the most important features of the restoration was the reproduction of the 1760s wallpaper

Wallpaper

Wallpaper is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. It is usually sold in rolls and is put onto a wall using wallpaper paste...

, the original of which was found in isolation on an attic beam in one of the houses on the estate. Old linen

Linen

Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....

towels were transformed into royal wallpaper.