The court theatre
18th-century wooden stage machinery still in use.
Pudelek — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0
Metro to Brommaplan then a short bus, or the summer ferry from the City Hall quay, about fifty minutes across Lake Malaren. It is only some eleven kilometres out, so this is not a full day trip but a comfortable half day within the city's limits.
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Drottningholm is the actual home of the Swedish royal family and the first Swedish site inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage list, in 1991. It sits on Lovon island west of the city and is usually described as the Versailles of the North — an accurate label, since its architecture, the scale of its gardens and its system of water channels draw directly on the French model, behind a long yellow facade facing Lake Malaren. Its most remarkable feature is not the palace but its theatre: the Drottningholm court theatre, built in 1766, is the only baroque theatre in the world whose original stage machinery still works — eighteenth-century pulleys, ropes and wooden drums that change scenes in seconds, still used for summer opera performances with the same technology. The garden holds another surprise: the Chinese Pavilion, a small palace the king gave his wife as a birthday surprise in 1753, at the height of the chinoiserie fashion then sweeping European courts. The most enjoyable approach is the ferry from central Stockholm, about an hour across the lake.
18th-century wooden stage machinery still in use.
A royal birthday gift from 1753.
170 11 Drottningholm, Stockholm