RIDDARHOLMEN CHURCH

Description

Essentials about Riddarholmen Church in brief

For more than three centuries, Riddarholmen Church was the burial church of the Swedish monarchs. If you want to visit the tombstones and sarcophagi of numerous Swedish kings and queens, you should make your way to the old church on the Riddarholmen peninsula.

The history of Riddarholmen Church

Riddarholmen Church was built at the end of the 13th century as part of a Franciscan monastery, which was established in 1270 under the Swedish King Magnus Ladulås. In the 17th century, however, all the monastery buildings except the church were demolished after all the monasteries in Sweden had already been dissolved during the Reformation. In 1807, the parish belonging to the church was also dissolved. Since then, Riddarholmen Church has been used exclusively as a funeral and memorial church.

The architecture of Riddarholmen Church

The three-nave church was built with red bricks in the Gothic style. The high west tower has a spire made of pierced cast iron. However, some of the funerary choirs built in later centuries are in the Renaissance style.

The Order of the Seraphim

Riddarholmen Church is the church of the Royal Order of the Seraphim, the highest order of merit in the Kingdom of Sweden. Until around 1820, all knights who died in Stockholm were buried in the church. To this day, the coats of arms of the knights can still be seen on the walls of the interior. As the church is not a parish church, the bells are only rung on the day of the burial of a seraphine knight.

Burial place of the Swedish kings

Inside Riddarholmen Church, the tombstones and sarcophagi of 17 Swedish monarchs are particularly impressive. The baroque tomb chapels for King Charles X and King Gustav II Adolf are particularly magnificent.

Between 1632 and 1950, all Swedish kings and queens, with one exception, were buried in Riddarholmen Church. Since the introduction of the hereditary monarchy by Gustav Vasa, Swedish kings were initially not buried in Stockholm, but in the cathedral churches of Strängnäs and Uppsala. It was only with the increasing importance of Stockholm as the center of the Swedish empire that the Swedish kings were buried in Riddarholmen Church, starting with Gustav II Adolf.

Gustaf VI. Adolf, the grandfather of today’s King Carl XVI Gustav, ended this tradition and instead chose the royal cemetery in Hagaparken as his final resting place. Members of the royal family have been buried there ever since.