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Founded: 1925Category: Palaces, manors and town halls in Sweden
Historical period: Modern and Nonaligned State (Sweden)
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Övralid was home to poet, writer, and Nobel Prize laureate Verner von Heidenstam. Övralid was built in 1925 on the east hillside of lake Vättern. Originally it had no electricity. Övralid houses a library, a study, a dining hall, two bed rooms, and three guest rooms. In the kitchen stands one of Sweden's oldest still running refrigerators from the 1930s. The interior has been kept the way it was when Heidenstam died in 1940. No one has lived in Övralid after Heidenstam. The building is open for visitors in the summer and the personal belongings of Heidenstam can be seen where he left them in 1940. Heidenstam is buried nearby.
References:Střekov Castle (Schreckenstein) is perched atop a cliff above the River Elbe, near the city of Ústí nad Labem. It was built in 1316 for John of Luxembourg, the father of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, to guard an important trade route to Germany. After changing hands several times, the castle was acquired by the Lobkowicz family in 1563. Its strategic importance led to occupations by Imperial Habsburg, Saxon, and Swedish forces during the Thirty Years' War, as well as successive sieges by Austrian and Prussian armies during the Seven Years' War.
Although Střekov Castle was heavily damaged during those conflicts and abandoned as a military installation by the end of the 18th century, the 1800s saw many poets and artists visiting the castle, drawn by a new trend of interest in romantic ruins.