Haga Palace

When King Gustav III was killed in 1792, the work on his grandiose castle at Brunnsviken was cancelled and his son and successor King Gustav IV Adolf instead started building a more modest palace. The King turned to relatively young architect Carl Christoffer Gjörwell with the aim to build a modern house in Italian villa style. Gjörwell had been employed at Haga since 1788 and had studied for Louis Jean Desprez both at the erection of the royal pavilion and with the incomplete castle in Brunnsviken. He was also the architect behind the Echo Temple. He modelled it after ballet-master Gallodier's Italian villa at Drottningholm which Gjörwell had designed himself. The foundation was laid-out in May 1802 and already before the end of the year the building was roofed. The building contractor was Herman Edberg who, aside from having skilled craftsmen as bricklayers and carpenters also had a group of infantrymen from Södermanlands regemente at his disposal. In December 1803 the King was informed that the scaffolding had been removed and the marble columns were raised. The columns were originally from Finland and had been brought to Poland during the reign of King Sigismund. They were taken back to Sweden by King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden and used by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger in the building of the German Church in Karlskrona. When the church was rebuilt after a massive fire in 1790 14 columns were left available for future use. The floor was made out of oak from Fredrikshov Palace and the stone was originally intended for King Gustav III:s never completed castle at Brunnsviken. The whole interior was finished at the end of 1805.

From the 1820s the palace was used as a summer house for Crown Prince Oscar and his consort Josephine. In the 1860 the palace was renovated for King Oscar I's youngest son Prince August and his wife Princess Therese. The Princess lived at Haga Palace until her demise in 1914 and she put her touch to the palace during her 54-year-long dwelling.

After the death of Therese the palace was put into disuse by the members of the royal family until the newly wedded couple Hereditary Prince Gustaf Adolf and Princess Sibylla relocated there in 1932 after some thorough renovation had been conducted. The Princesses Margaretha, Birgitta, Desiree and Christina and Prince Carl Gustaf, Sweden's present king, were all born there. In the wake of the sudden death of the Hereditary Prince in an KLM DC-3 airplane crash at Copenhagen Airport on 26 January 1947, the widowed mother and her children ended their full-time residency at the palace.

King Gustaf VI Adolf relinquished the royal disposal rights to the palace and released it to be used by the government in 1966 as an official residence for distinguished foreign guests of the government to Sweden, although it would turn out to be rather sparsely used for that purpose.

On 23 April 2009 Prime Minister Reinfeldt announced that the disposal rights to Haga Palace would be transferred back to the royal court as a wedding gift from the government in light of Crown Princess Victoria's approved marriage to Daniel Westling in June 2010. The couple moved in on 15 November 2010.

• Gustav III's Pavilion

• Haga Palace at Swedish Royal Court website

•   Media related to Haga Palace at Wikimedia Commons