Stjernsund Castle

Stjernsund Castle is a magnificent building in the Swedish municipality of Askersund in the province of Närke.

The castle stands on a high headland between Lake Alsen and a waterway that connects this lake with Lake Vättern. The building was erected between 1798 and 1801 to designs by the architect Carl Fredrik Sundvall in the neo-antique style then customary. The main building has two storeys as well as a lower-set service floor. In the middle there is a projecting section in the form of a prostyle with four columns resting on a raised stone stairway.

The castle belongs to an estate created in 1637 by Johan Gabrielsson Oxenstierna through the merger of several smaller properties. Through purchase and exchange the estate grew further and at times encompassed a large part of the parishes of Askersund and Hammar. In the following years the estate passed between various noble families before it was sold in 1823 to King Charles XIV John. The royal administrator let the castle fall into decay, but after Oscar I sold it in 1851 to his second-born son Franz Gustav, a thorough repair was carried out under the direction of P. A. Nyström. Prince Franz Gustav was musically gifted and according to various accounts composed some of his well-known songs at the castle. After the prince's early death Oscar I sold the estate to his fifth child, August, who in turn sold it on to the noble Cassel family.

By testament the castle passed in 1951 to the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, which is to preserve it as a cultural monument. Since 1965 it has been classified as a Byggnadsminne. The castle is open to visitors in summer. It also contains a carriage museum, a dairy and a café.

The estate is the home farm of the Swedish Red cattle breed.

Machine-translated from “Schloss Stjärnsund” on the German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Stjernsund Castle ranks #5,845 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #170 of the 206 mapped in Sweden. Founded 1801, it is older than 13% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 607 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. The nearest day-trip guide is Örebro, 48 km away. See how Sweden compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in German) ↗