The National Museum of Fine Arts is located on the Blasiholmen peninsula in the centre of Stockholm. Since its opening, the museum has acquired an impressive art collection thanks to its main patrons, King Gustav III and Carl Gustav Tessin. The museum was founded in 1792 as the "Royal Museum" but was renamed the National Museum when the modern building was built in 1866.
The museum is home to half a million drawings from the Middle Ages to 1900, works by Rembrandt and a 17th-century Dutch collection, as well as a collection of porcelain, paintings, sculptures and modern art. The museum also has an art library available to both scholars and the general public.
The current building was built between 1844 and 1866 in the Northern Italian Renaissance style, designed by German architect Friedrich August Stuhler, who also designed the New Museum in Berlin. The relatively closed exterior, with the exception of the central entrance, gives us no hint of the building's spacious interior, which is dominated by a huge staircase leading to the uppermost galleries. Over the decades, the building has been continually expanded and adapted to meet the growing demands of the museum. In 1961, for example, it was enlarged to create museum workshops. Thus, one layer of modifications was superimposed on another. However, the building was never fully renovated, so it no longer met international standards for safety, climate control, fire safety of the working environment and logistics.
The museum building is currently closed for renovation until the renovation work is complete, so it is possible to see the museum's collection by visiting a temporary exhibition space a ten-minute walk from the National Museum, at the Royal Academy of Liberal Arts in Stockholm.
