Svindersvik

[1] Svindersvik derives its name from Johan van Swinderen, a Dutch industrialist who was the first owner of the area; he erected a number of pitch factories in the vicinity in the 1640s.

It passed through inheritance to Claes Grill (I), active in the Swedish East India Company in 1736, and it was he who decided to build a country residence on the location.

They sold it in 1780 to Catharina Charlotta Ribbing, the widow of Charles De Geer, one of the richest men in Sweden.

The entrance is reached by a flight of double stairs, and set in the centre of the façade which protrudes in the way of an avant-corps with rusticated lesenes and pediment.

On the opposite side, facing the Baltic Sea, a three-sided avant-corps instead serves to mark the symmetrical centre of the building.

The central part of the building houses the dining room; to the left of this is an antechamber and to the right the so-called parade bedroom.

The dining room is decorated in a strict form of classicism with pilasters and painted festoons, executed in grisaille technique.

The antechamber is more pronouncedly Rococo in character, with exotic, Chinese wallpapers, a testimony of Claes Grill's work at the Swedish East India Company.