Baroque

Curving façades, domes and staged light – architecture that sets out to persuade and impress.

The Baroque began in 17th-century Rome as the Catholic Church's response to the Reformation and then became the style of absolutism. Façades move in curves, light is orchestrated and everything is directed towards a central point: the altar, the king, the main axis of the palace. Whole landscapes were ordered into axes and parterres.

After the Reformation the Catholic Church sought to persuade through emotion, and the popes in Rome commissioned churches, piazzas and fountains. At the same time absolutism grew, and kings such as Louis XIV used architecture to display their power. The style spread from Rome and Paris to Germany, Spain, Latin America and the Nordic countries. In Protestant Sweden the Baroque became the style of the state and the nobility rather than of the Church.

Sweden in its age as a great power built in the Baroque style. Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and the Younger designed Drottningholm and the Royal Palace in Stockholm, and the nobility built palaces such as the House of Nobility and Skokloster.