World Heritage since 1991
A palace, a pleasure palace, a theatre and a park, on Lovön nine kilometres from Ekerö centre and a quarter of an hour by bus from Brommaplan. Sweden's first World Heritage site, and the only one where a king still lives.
Built from 1662 to designs by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder for the dowager queen Hedvig Eleonora, and completed by his son Tessin the Younger. The state apartments, the staircase and the library are open to visitors; the southern part has been the royal family's private home since 1981. Opening hours and admission from the Royal Palaces.
The pleasure palace at the far end of the park, a birthday present for Queen Lovisa Ulrika in 1753. The present building was completed in 1769, in rococo with Chinese borrowings. Open in the summer half of the year.
Opened in 1766 and rediscovered in 1921 with its machinery and scenery untouched. In summer opera and ballet are performed with eighteenth-century stagecraft; the rest of the year the building is shown by guides. The theatre museum is in the royal stables next door. Run by the Drottningholm Court Theatre Foundation.
The baroque garden nearest the palace was laid out in Hedvig Eleonora's day in the late 1600s, with an embroidery parterre, bronze sculptures and clipped lime avenues. North of it begins the English park, started in 1780 by Fredrik Magnus Piper, with ponds, canals and free-standing groups of trees. The park is open all year.
The chapel in the palace's northern rotunda was consecrated in 1730 and is still used by Lovö parish. Services and concerts are announced by the Church of Sweden in Ekerö.
The palace lies on the edge of the Lovö nature reserve, protected in 2014. The Lovö runt trail, about 17 kilometres, follows the shore past the palace, and Lovö church from the 1100s stands a few kilometres into the island. On Kärsön next door there are bathing spots and oaks, and Drottningholmsmalmen by the palace is the old settlement built for the court's staff.
Unesco listed Drottningholm in 1991 as the best-preserved example of a royal residence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in northern Europe, built with Versailles as its model but on a smaller scale. What makes the place unusual is the whole: the palace, the theatre with its original machinery, the Chinese Pavilion and the park have survived together, and the estate is still used for what it was built for. The palace had 129,157 paying visits in 2024 according to the Royal Court's annual report, and the Chinese Pavilion 28,927; visitors to the park are not counted.
Cafés and the inn at the palace are listed under where to eat. Bathing on Kärsön and walks on Lovö under summer and things to do. All connections under getting here.
Information last checked 19 October 2026.