Interior of the Hallwylska museum and palace, Late 19th-century aristocratic residence in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Hallwylska palace is a late 19th-century aristocratic residence containing over 50,000 objects spread across five floors. The collection includes furniture, artwork, silver items, and rooms arranged as they were when the family lived there.

Count Walther and Countess Wilhelmina von Hallwyl donated their winter residence to the Swedish state in 1920, and it opened as a museum in 1938. This gift preserved the entire collection and transformed the palace into an important cultural institution.

The rooms follow historical styles, not Victorian: the dining room mixes Baroque and Renaissance, with a Swiss sideboard and a German chest dated around 1600. The Little Salon is Rococo, a space where the ladies withdrew after dinner, while the Smoking Room was the men's retreat, where the countess and her companion played cards with the count after meals.

You can explore two floors on your own, while the other three require a guided tour. Plan enough time to see the collection, as there are many rooms and thousands of objects to browse through.

The attic floor held a bowling alley, a picture gallery and the Countess's gym room. The personal lift, planned late in construction, rarely ran: out of service from 1909 to 1920, it was revived for the Count when his health declined. The Countess disliked it and took the stairs; she died at 85 after a fall on one of them.