The Royal Palace

This guide to the Royal Palace in Stockholm opens with a firefighter's wife spotting smoke over the old castle roof one afternoon in May 1697, and her husband Anders Andersson racing toward a fortress already losing its attic to flame. You'll hear how two guards meant to be watching that attic were elsewhere, how the royal family and citizens scrambled to save what they could as the blaze consumed Tre Kronor castle, and how architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger was drafting a replacement within six weeks. The guide follows his plans, and his son's, across the decades that followed.