Drottningholm Palace

Drottningholm Palace stands on the island of Lovon in Lake Malaren west of central Stockholm, built beginning in the 1660s for the Swedish queen dowager Hedwig Eleonora to a design by the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, who was later succeeded on the project by his son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger. Its formal Baroque gardens, laid out with fountains, sculpture and geometric parterres, were later complemented by an English-style landscape park and a Chinese Pavilion built in the eighteenth century as a pleasure retreat for the royal family. The palace grounds also contain the Drottningholm Palace Theatre, built in 1766 and remarkable for preserving its original eighteenth century stage machinery still in working order for performances today. Drottningholm has served as the private residence of the Swedish royal family since the 1980s and was inscribed as Sweden's first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.