Tre Kronor Castle

Tre Kronor stood on the site in Stockholm where Stockholm Palace stands today. It is believed to have begun as a citadel that Birger Jarl built into a royal castle in the middle of the 13th century, and the name "Tre Kronor" — Three Crowns — is believed to have been given during the reign of King Magnus Eriksson in the middle of the 14th. The castle consisted of two parts: the main castle, the högborgen, and the walled-in gardens surrounding it, the ekonomigården, with the high tower at the centre. The keep may have existed before the 16th century, though in a much smaller form; at the end of the 16th century the tower stood at about half the height shown in later pictures.

When Gustav Vasa broke Sweden free from the Kalmar Union — the series of personal unions binding Denmark, Sweden and Norway since 1397 — Tre Kronor became his most important royal seat, and he expanded the castle's defences. His son John III turned from defence to display, rebuilding and improving the castle aesthetically into a Renaissance residence and adding a castle church. In 1594 Gustavus Adolphus, who would reign as King of Sweden from 1611 to 1632, was born in the castle.

On 7 May 1697 a great fire broke out in Tre Kronor and destroyed the majority of the castle. It was discovered by the castle's keeper, Georg Stiernhoff, and the fire marshal, Sven Lindberg, told the royal staff he could not reach the fire-extinguishing equipment because the flames blocked his way to it. The royal family and court were forced to evacuate while servants tried to save what they could of the royal possessions. Built of wood and copper, the castle offered the fire its own fuel — the hot copper plates set the roof alight — and it spread quickly to every part of the building. Most of Sweden's national library and royal archives burned with it, a loss that has made the country's early history unusually difficult to document ever since.

Shortly after the fire died out, an investigation began into why it had not been discovered earlier. A royal court named three possible culprits: the fire marshal Sven Lindberg, and Anders Andersson and Mattias Hansson, the soldiers on fire watch that night. Andersson, it emerged, had been running an errand for the fire marshal's wife, against fire-watch regulations; Hansson had left his post to fetch food from the kitchen, claiming the same woman had given him permission — a statement she denied. The court concluded that Lindberg had used a soldier for his and his wife's private errands, and that he had accepted bribes in exchange for hiring people into positions at the castle.

In February 1698 the sentences came down. Lindberg and Hansson were condemned to death for neglecting their duty, and Andersson was sentenced to run the gauntlet. Both death sentences were later commuted to running the gauntlet and six years of forced labour at Carlsten fortress — but Lindberg died while running the gauntlet.

Plans were made to rebuild on the old foundation, with Nicodemus Tessin the Younger as the architect in charge. The new building, Stockholm Palace, was completed in 1754; Tessin had died in 1728 and never saw it finished. The lost castle itself was conjured back once more — a one-third-scale replica of Tre Kronor was built for the General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm in 1897.