Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
BAROQUE BEAUTY
The most glorious of palatial buildings from the Baroque era is
Drottningholm
outside
Stockholm, a masterpiece created by Tessin for Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora. Tessin's
other great creation was
Kalmar cathedral
, the finest church of the era and a truly beautiful
vision of Italian Baroque. Nicodemus Tessin the Younger followed his father as court architect
and continued his style. He designed the new
Royal Palace at Stockholm
following the city's
great fire of 1697 and the two contrasting
Karlskrona
churches: the domed rotunda of the
Trefaldighetskyrkan (Trinity church) and the barrel-vaulted basilica of the Fredrikskyrkan
(Fredrik's church). Karlskrona, like
Gothenburg
, is a fine example of regulated town planning, a
discipline that came into being during this era.
By the time Gustav II Adolf ascended the throne in 1611, a greater opulence was
becoming prevalent in domestic architecture. This tendency became even more marked
in the
Baroque
area, which in Sweden commenced with the reign of Queen Kristina,
the art-loving and extravagant daughter of Gustav II Adolf. The first wave of Baroque
was largely introduced by the German Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, who had spent
much time in Italy.
The eighteenth century
In the eighteenth century
Rococo
emerged as the style favoured by the increasingly affluent
Swedish middle class, who looked to France for their models. This lightening of
architectural style paved the way for the Neoclassical elegance which would follow with the
reign of Gustav III, who was greatly impressed by the architecture of Classical antiquity.
Good examples of this clear Neoclassical mode are the
Inventariekammaren
(Inventory
Chambers) at Karlskrona, and the
King's Pavilion at Haga
, designed for Gustav III by Olof
Temelman, complete with Pompeiian interiors by the painter Louis Masreliez.
Another, and quite distinct aspect of late eighteenth-century taste, was the fascination
with
chinoiserie
, due in large measure to the power and influence of the Gothenburg-
based Swedish East India Company, founded in 1731. The culmination of this trend
was the
Kina Slott
(Chinese Pavilion) at Drottningholm, a tiny Palladian villa built in
1763 and now beautifully restored.
The nineteenth century
Two vast projects dominated the Swedish architectural scene at the beginning of the
nineteenth century: the remarkable
Göta Canal
, a 190-kilometre waterway linking the
great lakes of Vänern and Vättern, Gothenburg and the Baltic; and the
Karlsborg
fortress
on the western shores of Vättern, designed to be an inland retreat for the royal
family and the gold stocks, but abandoned ninety years later in 1909.
By the mid-nineteenth century, a new style was emerging, based on Neoclassicism
but flavoured by the French-born king's taste. This
Empire Style
(sometimes referred to
as the Karl Johan Style) is most closely associated with the architect
Fredrik Blom
of
Karlskrona, whose most famous building is the elegant pleasure palace
Rosendal
on
Djurgården, Stockholm.
During the reign of Oscar I (1844-59), while the buildings of Britain's manufacturing
centres provided models for Sweden's industrial towns, the styles of the past couple of
centuries began to reappear, particularly Renaissance and Gothic. One of the most
glamorous examples of late nineteenth-century neo-Gothic splendour is
Helsingborg
town hall
, built around 1890 as a riot of fairy-tale red-brick detail. The names which
crop up most often in this era include Fredrik Scholander, who designed the elaborate
Stockholm
synagogue
in 1861, and Helgo Zetterwall, whose churches of the 1870s and
1880s bear a resemblance to neo-Gothic buildings in Britain and Germany.
