Skandia, Movie theater in Norrmalm, Stockholm, Sweden.
Skandia is a movie theater in the Norrmalm district of Stockholm, housed inside the Warodell House on Drottninggatan. The interior features a single large auditorium with a decorated ceiling, an upper gallery, and ornamental details throughout the hall.
The Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund designed the building, which opened on September 19, 1923, at a time when cinema was becoming a widespread form of entertainment across Europe. Asplund later moved toward a stricter functionalism, and this theater marks the moment between his two major phases.
The name Skandia comes from Filmaktiebolaget Skandia, the film company that bought the Warodell House in 1918 and planned the cinema as its premiere theatre before merging into Svensk Filmindustri. Since 2023 Stockholm Film Festival has run the cinema after a fundraising campaign, following Filmstaden's tenure up to its centenary.
The entrance is on Drottninggatan in the Warodell House, with the auditorium set in the rear courtyard. The cinema reopened in 2001 after a renovation that restored much of Gunnar Asplund's original interior. It now operates mainly as a weekend cinema and as a gala venue during the Stockholm Film Festival.
The auditorium was conceived as an atmospheric cinema: a dark-blue vaulted ceiling stood in for the night sky, with white light globes hanging from it to suggest open space. The doors to the side balconies were built as small house facades with gilded moldings and columns. The Wurlitzer organ installed in 1926 could rise slowly from the floor, played by an organist in a white dinner jacket.
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