Gustav III’s Pavilion
Gustav III wanted to build a large palace at Haga but had to make do with a pavilion while construction was under way. The interior, inspired by the wall paintings of Pompeii, is a key work of the Gustavian style. Outside, the pavilion is plain and light, with a low columned portico.
Gustav III bought Haga in the 1770s and had an English landscape park laid out to plans by Fredrik Magnus Piper. He planned a large palace to designs by Louis Jean Desprez, and the foundations were begun in 1786. In the meantime a smaller pavilion was built to designs by Olof Tempelman, with interiors by Louis Masreliez. The pavilion was erected around 1787–1792. Masreliez had studied for a long time in Italy and had been influenced by Raphael’s Loggias in the Vatican and the newly discovered wall paintings of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The building is constructed of rendered brick and timber. It became the king’s private retreat, where he could work and receive a small company in a relaxed setting, far from the court at Stockholm Palace.
The pavilion stands on Brunnsviken and has a plain, light façade with a low portico of columns facing the water. The interior is divided into a suite of rooms of different shapes and colours. The Mirror Salon facing the lake has mirrors that capture the light and the view. In the bedroom the bed stands in an alcove behind columns. The walls are painted with delicate ornament in the Pompeian style: tendrils, grotesques, medallions and fine lines on a light ground. The furniture is Gustavian and was made for the rooms. Everything is on a small scale but carefully balanced, and shows the Gustavian style in its most refined form. The pavilion is more a private residence than a palace of state, and it is precisely this that makes it unusual.
Gustav III was assassinated in 1792, and the building of the palace was abandoned. The foundation walls remain in the park as a ruin. The pavilion was used by later kings and has been restored several times, but Masreliez’s interiors are largely preserved. Today it is one of the royal palaces and is open to the public in summer. Haga Park also contains other buildings from Gustav III’s time, including the Copper Tents, the Echo Temple, the Turkish Pavilion and the Chinese Pagoda. Haga Park is part of the Royal National City Park. The pavilion became a model for the Gustavian style in manor houses and middle-class homes, where light colours, simple forms and classical ornament replaced the extravagance of the Rococo. It shows how Sweden took up European Neoclassicism and gave it a cool, elegant character of its own.