Ulriksdal Palace
Named for a prince who died aged one, then repurposed as a veterans' hospital — this palace has lived several strange lives.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Stockholm offline.
Built 1638–1645 on the Edsviken, six kilometres north of Stockholm, Ulriksdal spent 27 years (1822–1849) housing veterans of the Russo-Swedish War of 1808–1809, which stripped most of the 18th-century interiors. What survives is the architecture: Nicodemus Tessin the Elder's lakeside design, Carl Hårleman's 1720s mansard roof, and Queen Louisa Ulrika's theatre — the Confidencen — still on the grounds.
What to look for
- Hårleman's mansard roof from the 1720s, described as one of the first in Sweden
- The Confidencen theatre, set up by Queen Louisa Ulrika in the mid-18th century
- The lakeside façade overlooking Edsviken — Tessin the Elder's design, begun in the 1670s but halted around 1690 for lack of funds
Solna Municipality, 6 km north of Stockholm, within the Royal National City Park — reachable as a half-day trip from the city centre.
Ulriksdal Palace is one of 34 sights worth the detour in Stockholm, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Stockholm pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Stockholm
- Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesThis is the body that picks up the phone to tell physicists and chemists they've won the Nobel Prize.
- Avicii ArenaA 110-metre sphere that serves as the Sun in the world's largest scale model of the solar system — and you can walk right up to it.
- Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery)A 1920 cemetery built on old pine-covered gravel quarries that went on to reshape how the world designs burial grounds.
- Stockholm PalaceThe same ground has held a royal residence since the 1250s — the current palace took nearly six decades to finish, outlived its architect, and the Rococo interiors are largely unchanged.
- Vasa MuseumA 64-gun warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 — and is still almost entirely intact.
- Skansen150 actual Swedish buildings, shipped piece by piece to one hill — a whole country preserved before industry erased it.