Tullgarn Palace is a royal summer palace built in the 1720s. The palace offers a mixture of rococo, Gustavian and Victorian styles. The interior design is regarded as one of Sweden's finest.
In 1719, the old Renaissance castle from the late 16th century was demolished. The newly appointed Privy Councillor Magnus Julius De la Gardie commissioned architect Joseph Gabriel Destain to design the present palace, built in the 1720s. The courtyard is open to the sea and took on its present appearance in the 1820s. It is modelled on the garden of Logården at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.
In 1772, Tullgarn was acquired by the crown and became a royal residence. Occupancy was granted to Duke Fredrik Adolf, youngest brother of King Gustav III. Between 1778 and 1793, Frederick Adolf resided there with his lover Sophie Hagman, and many episodes from this period are preserved as the Tullgarnsmminnena, The Tullgarn memories. Frederick Adolf modernized the palace in neo classical style, adding another storey to the wings, giving the palace a flat Italian-style roof. Fredrik Adolf's interiors are some of the finest examples of Gustavian style in Sweden. Among the designers involved were Louis Masreliez, Jean Baptiste Masreliez, Per Ljung and Ernst Philip Thoman. Many of the interiors created at that time remain today in their original form.
King Gustaf V (then Crown Prince) took over Tullgarn in 1881 and together with his consort Victoria, implemented extensive changes. The main building was decorated more like a modern functional summer home then a royal pleasure palace. Much of the present interior dates from the time of King Gustav V and Queen Viktoria, including the vestibule, whose walls are covered in hand-painted Dutch tiles. The breakfast room is furnished like a south German Bierstube, possibly reflecting the fact that Queen Viktoria came from Baden in Southern Germany. The royal couple used the palace as their summer residence.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.