Hallwylska Palatset (Hallwyl Palace), Stockholm

Hallwyl Palace is the Swedish capital’s most lavish time capsule and possibly the most well-appointed winter residence anyone’s ever donated out of sheer cultural guilt.

Built between 1893 and 1898, this neo-everything fantasy was designed by the architect Isak Gustaf Clason for Count Walther von Hallwyl and his formidable wife, Wilhelmina. While Walther got an office, Wilhelmina got... well, all the rest. She filled the palace with a globe-spanning art collection so vast it basically screamed: “Museum me!” And she did.

Wilhelmina, clearly someone who liked to plan ahead, gifted the entire place to the Swedish state in 1920—with one condition: don't touch a thing. It’s the aristocratic equivalent of "leave my room exactly how I left it." Thanks to that insistence, by 1938 the Hallwyl Museum was open to the public, preserving not just furniture and fine art, but also the eccentricities of elite Swedish life at the turn of the 20th century.

Outside, the palace looks like a greatest-hits album of medieval and Renaissance architecture, particularly with a Venetian flair—because if you're going to be dramatic, go all in. Inside, however, it was surprisingly high-tech for its time: electricity, central heating, telephones, bathrooms, and even an elevator added later...

Today, the Hallwyl Collection numbers around 50,000 items, all still lounging in their original opulent surroundings. Step inside, and you're not just visiting a museum—you’re eavesdropping on a very extravagant past that never quite moved out.

Ready to time travel? Come on in and see how the Count's other half really lived—telephones and all...