Rosendals slott

This guide to Rosendals slott in Stockholm traces the improbable rise of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a seventeen-year-old French private who climbed through revolution and battlefield promotions to become one of Napoleon's marshals, then a king. You'll hear how a Swedish delegation crossed the continent to offer him a crown, and why architect Fredrik Blom built this summer palace by framing it across town and floating it out to this spot on barges. It follows the palace from a fire that destroyed its predecessor through its 1820s reconstruction.