Drottningholm Palace

This guide to Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm opens with a fire that destroyed Queen Lovisa Ulrika's court theatre during a performance in 1762, and her decision to rebuild it within two years. You'll hear about the new theatre's opening in 1766, and about the long stretch afterward when the building sat locked and forgotten, its stage machinery untouched, until a theatre historian went looking in 1921. The guide also traces the palace itself back to Queen Hedvig Eleonora after an earlier fire in 1661.