Sweden Guide
Stockholm
The National Museum of Fine Arts
Opening time: June– Aug Tues 11am–8pm, Wed– Sun 11am–5pm; Sept– May Tues & Thurs 11am–8pm, Wed & Fri– Sun 11am–5pm
Price: Free
Website: www.nationalmuseum.se
The striking waterfront National Museum of Fine Arts (Nationalmuseum) looks right out over the Royal Palace. The impressive collection is contained on three floors: the ground floor is taken up by changing exhibitions of prints and drawings, and there's a shop and café here too, as well as luggage lockers. So much is packed into the museum that it can quickly become overwhelming – it's worth splashing out on the guidebook.
The first floor is devoted to applied art, and if it's curios you're after, this museum has the lot – beds slept in by kings, cabinets leaned on by queens, plates eaten off by nobles – mainly from the centuries when Sweden was a great power. There's modern work alongside the ageing tapestries and furniture, including Art Nouveau coffee pots and vases, and examples demonstrating the intelligent simplicity of Swedish chair design.
It's the second floor, however, that's most engaging, featuring a plethora of European and Mediterranean sculpture and some mesmerizing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Russian icons. The paintings are equally wide ranging and of a similarly high quality, including pieces by El Greco, Canaletto, Gainsborough and, most notably, Rembrandt's Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, one of his largest monumental works, a bold depiction of well-armed Roman chieftains. There are also minor paintings by other later masters (most notably Renoir and Gauguin) and some fine sixteenth- to eighteenth-century works by Swedish artists.