We took a Ferry from the harbor near our hotel up Lake Malaren to Drottningholm Palace. The palace is located on Lovon Island. It was built from 1662 to 1686. It’s the most well preserved royal castle built in the 1600’s in Sweden. It’s also representative of European architecture for that period. It has French Baroque influences and Classical Italian elements. It’s capped by a Nordic roof. It was formerly the Swedish royal family’s summer residence.

Today, the current Swedish royal family uses Drottningholm as their primary residence and has since 1981. It’s guarded by the Swedish Military just like Stockholm Palace. The rooms in the southern wing of the palace are reserved as their residence. The rest of the palace and the palace grounds are open to the public year around. Drottningholm Palace is on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

You can see our first glimpse of the palace in the first photo, as we came around a bend in the island.

I took the next photo from the ferry dock, which is where I had to stand to get the front of the entire palace in one photo.

You can see a royal military guard in the third photo. Nonetheless, we were let into this palace.

The fourth photo was taken from behind the palace, in the royal gardens.

The Palace Theater is on the left in the last photo. It was built in the 1760’s. The palace has several other out-buildings as well.