Nicodemus Tessin d.ä.
Tessin the Elder came to Sweden from Stralsund and became palace architect. He designed Drottningholm Palace, Kalmar Cathedral and several of Stockholm’s aristocratic palaces, and introduced Italian and French Baroque to Sweden.
Nicodemus Tessin the Elder was born in 1615 in Stralsund in Pomerania, which was then on its way to becoming Swedish. He trained as a master builder and fortification builder and came to Sweden in 1636, where he worked first under the architect Simon de la Vallée and later on fortifications. In the 1650s he made a long study tour of Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands, where he absorbed both Roman Baroque and French palace architecture. On his return he received commissions from Queen Christina, the royal family and the high nobility. He became royal architect and, in 1661, city architect of Stockholm, and he quickly established himself as Sweden’s leading architect of the Swedish Empire period.
Tessin’s best-known work is Drottningholm Palace, which he designed for the Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora from 1662, with a symmetrical main block, wings and a lavish staircase. Kalmar Cathedral, begun in 1660, is a strictly symmetrical centrally planned church with Italian models. In Stockholm he designed aristocratic palaces such as the Bonde Palace and remodelled the Wrangel Palace on Riddarholmen, and he began the Caroline burial chapel at Riddarholmen Church. He also worked on Borgholm Castle on Öland. His architecture combines Italian classicism and French palace planning with Swedish conditions: rendered façades, steep roofs and a restrained order in which pilasters and carefully proportioned windows carry the expression.
Tessin the Elder was ennobled in 1674 and died in 1681, when several of his major buildings were not yet finished. His son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger took over both the office and the projects, completing Drottningholm, Kalmar Cathedral and the burial chapel among others. Together, father and son created a Swedish Baroque architecture that could bear comparison with that of the Continent. Drottningholm, with its palace, park and theatre, became Sweden’s first site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1991. Tessin the Elder showed that an immigrant master builder from the Baltic coast could give the young great power an architecture of European standing, and his aristocratic palaces still define Stockholm’s Old Town and Riddarholmen, where they now house courts and government agencies.