- Type
- Ruin
- Origins
- 1590 · 16th century per Wikidata: founding, first mention or construction
- Location
- Östergötland, Sweden
- Coordinates
- 58.6161°, 16.3411°
History
The castle on the south shore of Bråviken was built in 1588–1590 by Queen Gunilla Bielke, wife of King John III; after his death in 1592 she lived here as a widow until she died in 1597. Bråborg then passed to her son, Duke John of Östergötland, who in 1612 married his cousin Princess Maria Elizabeth, and both died at the castle in 1618, a few months apart. As the couple were childless the estate reverted to the Crown and was later held by, among others, John Casimir, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken, and his son Charles Gustav, the future Charles X. A fire damaged the building in 1669, and fifty years later, in 1719, Russian forces burned it, who also sacked Norrköping. It was never rebuilt: the townspeople took its stone to rebuild their houses, and the new royal farm of Bråborg was built less than a kilometre away.
What to see
The old site covers about 240 by 190 metres and lies beside a market garden on the land of the former royal garden. You can see the rubble of the 32-by-30-metre castle with two surviving barrel-vaulted cellars, around 400 metres of partly silted and overgrown moats with causeways, the cross-shaped foundation of the chapel and traces of the Renaissance garden. In Norrköping, on the south side of Gamla torget, the crowned monogram of John III and Gunilla Bielke from the castle is set above a doorway of the Tesdorph house.
Wikipedia article Wikidata Q661121
Popularity: articles about this site in 9 Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia language editions and others).