Stockholm Palace

What it is

Kungliga slottet, the Royal Palace of Stockholm, stands at the northern edge of Gamla Stan on the rock where Birger Jarl is recorded as having built a fortress in the mid-thirteenth century. That fortress grew into the Tre Kronor castle, and on 7 May 1697 a fire destroyed practically all of it; only the recently rebuilt north wing, which had already been given its stern Roman baroque exterior, survived more or less unscathed. Nicodemus Tessin the Younger submitted drawings for a replacement six weeks after the fire and expected the work to take about five years. The royal family did not move back in until 1754. What a visitor walks into today is that second building: a baroque block laid out on the model of a Roman palace, with more than 600 rooms across eleven floors, the state apartment facing the city and the smaller living rooms facing the inner courtyard. It is not a museum that happens to occupy a palace. It is the official residence of His Majesty The King, the setting for most of the monarchy's official receptions and the workplace of the offices of the Royal Court, and much of it is open to the public all the same, all year round. The medieval towers and their loopholes are still there, concealed behind the baroque façade of the north wing.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

One ticket covers several separate places and the operator states that they are all included in it: the Royal Apartments, the Treasury and the Museum Three Crowns. The Royal Apartments are themselves a collective name. The Bernadotte Apartments fill fourteen rooms in the north wing, furnished in the 1730s and 1740s under the chief architect Carl Hårleman and hung with portraits of almost all the older members of the dynasty. The State Apartments are nine state rooms planned by Tessin: the Council Chamber where The King still meets the government, Gustav III's state bedchamber where he died in 1792 of a gunshot wound received at the Royal Opera, Karl XI's Gallery — a smaller copy of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and the room where reception dinners are held — and the ballroom known as the White Sea. The Hall of State and the Apartments of the Orders of Chivalry belong to the same ticket. The Treasury lies in dark cellar vaults and holds the regalia, among them Erik XIV's crown, two swords of state belonging to Gustav Vasa and the silver baptismal font of 1696 still used at royal baptisms. The Museum Three Crowns is entered through a five-metre-thick thirteenth-century defence wall. Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities, open in the summer months, shows his sculpture collection in two stone galleries. The Royal Chapel and the Royal Gift Shop are here too. The Royal Armoury is not on the palace ticket.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Allow two hours. The Royal Palace publishes no suggested visit length of its own, so two hours is this guide's judgement rather than a figure read off the operator's site. It divides roughly like this. Three quarters of an hour to an hour goes on the Royal Apartments, which is where the time actually disappears: the Bernadotte and State Apartments together run to more than twenty rooms, and each of them rewards standing still rather than walking through. Half an hour goes on the Treasury, which is small but slow, because it is dark, the objects are little and everyone in the vault is reading. Twenty to thirty minutes covers the Museum Three Crowns, which leans on large models and is quicker to take in. Adding the Hall of State and the Apartments of the Orders of Chivalry raises the total rather than the pace. An hour is enough only for a visitor who picks one of the three and walks past the others. Three hours is realistic for someone who takes the guided tour of the Royal Apartments and then goes back through the Treasury alone afterwards. If the changing of the guard is part of the plan, add roughly another hour: the ceremony itself runs about forty minutes, and a place to stand in the Outer Courtyard has to be found before it starts.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The palace opens every day of the week — there is no weekly closing day — and the hours move with the season rather than with the weekday. The published 2026 calendar shows 10.00 to 17.00 daily through 30 September and 10.00 to 16.00 daily from 1 October to the end of the year. It shows the palace shut on 24 and 25 December, and open again on Boxing Day, on the days between Christmas and New Year, and on New Year's Eve. No last-admission time is published anywhere on the operator's pages, which is worth planning around rather than testing: arriving forty minutes before closing leaves no stated right to be let in. The real scheduling hazard here is not the season but The King. The palace warns that in connection with His Majesty's official receptions the Royal Apartments can be closed completely or partially, and it lists the affected dates in a fact box on the opening-hours page — one July 2026 date, for instance, is recorded as partly open until 12.00 and closed thereafter. Check that box against the intended day before buying anything. A winter ticket also buys less than a summer one, because Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities opens only during the summer months. The changing of the guard falls in the middle of the day and crowds the Outer Courtyard around it.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Admission in 2026 is SEK 240 for an adult from May to September and SEK 220 for the rest of the year. Students pay SEK 220 in the summer season and SEK 200 outside it; children aged 7 to 17 pay SEK 120 and SEK 110. Children aged 6 or under are admitted free when an adult is with them. The charge is per person and it covers the Royal Apartments, including the Hall of State and the Apartments of the Orders of Chivalry, together with the Treasury and the Museum Three Crowns. A combined ticket with the Riddarholmen Church, the royal burial church five minutes' walk away, costs SEK 270 for an adult, SEK 250 for a student and SEK 135 for a child. The Royal Palaces' annual card is SEK 500 at every age and admits the holder to ten royal sites. The Cultural Heritage Card takes fifty per cent off the admission charge. Tickets are sold at every entrance to the palace during regular opening hours as well as online through the Tickets link on the palace's own pages, so buying ahead is a convenience rather than a necessity. Free-entry categories — ICOM members, press with a press card, authorised tour guides and several named societies among them — cannot be booked online; those tickets are issued at the entrance against the membership card and proof of identity. The operator notes that the price list is subject to change.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The visiting address is Slottsbacken 1, in Gamla Stan. No car is needed, and bringing one is a liability rather than a help: the operator says only a limited number of parking places lie next to the palace and that the City of Stockholm manages them. Take the metro to Gamla Stan and walk five minutes through the old town, either up the street towards Stortorget or along Västerlånggatan; or take the metro to Kungsträdgården and walk ten minutes over the Strömbron bridge. Buses stop at Slottsbacken and at Riddarhustorget, each about five minutes away, the second of them via Storkyrkobrinken. The palace has several entrances and they do not all lead to the same place, which catches people out. Tickets and information, the toilets and the Royal Gift Shop are in the Outer Courtyard. The Western Vault leads to the Royal Apartments during the winter season and to the Museum Three Crowns. The Southern Vault leads to the Treasury, and during the summer season also to the Royal Apartments and the Royal Chapel; pram parking is outside it. The Northern portico is the street-level way into the Museum Three Crowns. Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities has its own entrance, as does the Royal Armoury, which is not covered by the palace ticket. The Outer Courtyard is where the Royal Guard is posted.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The palace is a protected object and entry controls may take place, so allow time for a bag check rather than arriving on the minute. Prams cannot be brought inside because of the sensitive environment; there is a parking spot for them outside, unattended and with no locking facilities, which a family is better off knowing before it sets out. Large bags and backpacks must be left in the lockers at the Ticket and Information office in the Outer Courtyard — the lockers measure 59 cm high, 39 cm wide and 51 cm deep — and they have to be emptied before closing time, not collected at leisure afterwards. Handbags and small backpacks may be carried through. Umbrellas go in the umbrella stand. Removable ice grips must be taken off and built-in ones retracted before the visit, which in a Stockholm winter is a real instruction rather than a formality. Dogs and other pets are not allowed, apart from guide dogs for the blind and visually impaired. Eating and smoking are not allowed inside, and the palace asks visitors not to smoke by the entrances either. Phones should be set to silent. Toilets are by the Ticket and Information office and in the Tre Kronor Museum; the wheelchair-accessible ones are by the entrance to the Royal Apartments, where the staff will help, and in the Tre Kronor Museum.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

Photographing and filming are allowed for private use, and the palace sets the limits plainly: no flash or added lighting, no tripods, no selfie sticks and no other fixed equipment, and nothing that disturbs other visitors, a guided tour or any other activity going on at the palace. Cameras that shoot in 360 degrees are not allowed and neither are drones. Anything commercial, or any arranged shoot, needs permission in advance from the Information Department at the Royal Court, at [email protected]. In practice the ban on flash is the rule that shapes the visit. The state rooms are lit for their own sake rather than for a sensor, and the Treasury is in cellar vaults and is genuinely dark, so a fast lens or a steady grip matters more here than an expensive camera. Karl XI's Gallery and the White Sea are the two interiors where a handheld frame usually holds, because both are long rooms taking daylight down one side. The stone galleries of Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities look out over Logården, the terrace on the east side. Outside, the west façade over the Outer Courtyard is the backdrop for the changing of the guard, and the east façade, with its colossal pilasters, faces the morning.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Where it is

• 30 min

  2 min walk

  Storkyrkan

  • Must see · Heritage site
  • Place of worship
• 45 min

  2 min walk

  Tessin Palace

  • High · Heritage site
  • Historic monument
• 1 hr 30 min

  3 min walk

  Nobel Prize Museum

  • Must see
  • Museum

External links

• View on Wikidata