Bonde Palace, Baroque palace in Gamla stan, Stockholm, Sweden
Bonde Palace is a Baroque palace at Riddarhustorget 8 in Gamla Stan, Stockholm, built 1662–1673 to designs by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and Jean De la Vallée. Its H-shaped plan has two southern wings flanking an entrance court and two northern wings around a small Baroque garden. The pale, slightly pinkish facade has rows of rectangular and round-arched windows, thin pilasters and a long moulded cornice; a tower-like section with a clock and green copper cupola stands at the left, a broad green copper dome at the right.
Gustaf Bonde had the palace built between 1662 and 1673 to designs by Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and Jean De la Vallée. After the 1697 Tre Kronor fire, the Royal Library and Svea Court of Appeal were housed here, and a 1710 fire destroyed the original copper roof. The city bought the building in 1730 for its town hall; Johan Eberhard Carlberg rebuilt it after the 1753 fire, and since 1949 it has housed the Supreme Court.
The palace's name comes from Gustaf Bonde, the Lord High Treasurer who commissioned it. As Stockholm's court house it witnessed the public flogging of Jacob Johan Anckarström in 1792 and the mob beating of Axel von Fersen the Younger to death in 1810. The building is now the seat of the Swedish Supreme Court.
The building faces Riddarhustorget, with Myntgatan along its south side and the alleys Riddarhusgränd and Rådhusgränd on its west and east. Vasabron's roadway bends around the palace because a 19th-century plan to widen the alley was never carried out. As the seat of the Supreme Court, it is not open to the public; the exterior and the square can be seen at any time.
The northern corner cupolas date from the original 1660s construction and survived the 1710 fire that destroyed the main roof. They are now among the few visible parts of the building that have not been altered since it was first completed.
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