Nationalmuseum

Friedrich August Stuler designed the building in Venetian and Florentine Renaissance manner and it opened in 1866; a rebuilding that ran from 2013 to 2018 opened up skylights that had been boarded over, so the upper galleries now work on daylight as intended. The collection covers European painting to 1900 - Rembrandt, Watteau, Chardin, Renoir - with a large Swedish holding including Carl Larsson's murals on the entrance stair and the strongest single group of Anders Zorn. Design and applied art run alongside from the sixteenth century to the present, which is the part the museum handles distinctively, mixing periods rather than separating them.

Background

The museum began in 1792 as Kungliga Museet, the Royal Museum, with King Gustav III and Carl Gustaf Tessin among its benefactors, and took the name Nationalmuseum when the present building opened in 1866, during the General Industrial Exposition of Stockholm. Building had started in 1844. Stüler, whose other work includes the Neues Museum in Berlin, gave it three floors clad in Swedish limestone. Toilets arrived only in 1915 and electricity in 1931. Some of its 18th-century French paintings once belonged to Queen Lovisa Ulrika. Beyond Blasieholmen, the museum runs the Gustavsberg porcelain museum and the Swedish Institute in Paris, and since 2018 it has shown part of the collection at Nationalmuseum Jamtli in Östersund.

Source: Wikipedia, "Nationalmuseum"

What's there

• European painting to 1900 - Rembrandt, Watteau, Chardin, Renoir.
• Larsson's stair murals - and a large Zorn holding.
• Design and applied art - hung across periods, not separated.
• Daylight galleries - reopened in the 2018 rebuilding.

When to go

Year round; closed Mondays. Two to three hours.

Practical notes

It is large and the design and painting routes cross confusingly. Temporary exhibitions are charged. The restaurant is expensive. Weekend afternoons are busy.

Nearby

The Royal Palace is across the water; Moderna Museet is a short walk.

Key facts