Is Sweden's largest art museum worth a visit after a ￡100m renovation?

Stockholm is the epitome of elegant, easy-going, Scandinavian café society – cool and contemporary, scattered over a dozen or so islands and laced with parks, squares and avenues. It’s a lovely place for a relaxing weekend, in fact.

But, while the city is home to ABBA The Museum, has a couple of royal palaces and a medieval old town, it isn’t exactly stuffed with world-class sights. There is the extraordinary Vasa – a 17th-century warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 and was rediscovered in 1961. And that, frankly, is that – or at least it has been since the Nationalmuseum closed for renovation in 2013. 

There’s good news for culture lovers, who fancy a short break in the city, however. Next Saturday the Nationalmuseum will reopen after a five-year, ￡100 million project which has seen the building entirely gutted and reconfigured. I went for a preview last week, with a hazy, rather distant memory from my last visit in the Nineties of some impressive art housed in rather gloomy galleries.

The building, which stands on the waterfront overlooking the royal palace and the old town, was built 150 years ago by a German architect in classic neo-Renaissance style. There are echoes of our own V&A: a typically confident 19th-century celebration of the value of great art and design at the heart of a nation’s cultural life. 

But over that century and a half, many of the architectural strengths of the museum had been lost. Nearly all the windows and one of the central courtyards were blocked up, and much valuable space was being used for offices and storage. The collection was also rigidly subdivided – paintings on the top floor, decorative arts on the first floor, drawings and prints in a downstairs gallery.

The renovation project has revolutionised both the building and the way the collection is presented. The courtyards have been opened up, given glass roofs and incorporated into the main building. The exhibition space has been dramatically increased (there are three times more artefacts on display than before) and the windows have been unblocked, so that you now have views not only out across the sea and the city, but right through the building itself. 

Meanwhile, the daylight has been subtly controlled so that there is a rhythm of brighter, sunny rooms, and others with more intimate low lighting. Wall colours are strong, too, a decisive move away from the bland whites and greys of the Eighties, which I think also gives rhythm and variety to a visitor’s experience of both the building and the exhibits.

There is also a new logic to the displays. Visitors start on the top floor and follow a timeline from (roughly) the 16th century to the present day, and the paintings are exhibited alongside the decorative arts. So, for example, you see Lalique glass in the same room as Renoir and Monet. It’s a similar approach to the one taken in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam when it reopened in 2013 and gives a cultural context to the pictures which is missing from so many museums. 

But I’m forgetting about the art itself. This is, in essence, the Swedish royal collection, amassed mainly since the 18th century. Summarising very broadly, its strongest suits are the Dutch Golden Age, and French 18th and 19th-century paintings, as well as the leading collection of Swedish art from the 18th to the 20th century. 

There are several highlights for me. Among several great Rembrandts are one of his earliest self portraits and his last painting, which depicts St Simeon, on the verge of death holding the infant Jesus. Watteau’s Italian Serenade is one of his most evocative images of intrigue and seduction. And I liked the loose, but evocative oil sketch by Gustave Courbet of his redheaded lover – Jo, the Beautiful Irishwoman. The collection of Old Master prints and drawings, displayed on a rotating basis because of the risk of light damage, is also world-class.

The essentials

The Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (nationalmuseum.se) reopens on Oct 13, Tues-Sun 11am-7pm, admission free except for special exhibitions; these start with a John Singer Sargent retrospective until Jan 13, admission ￡13.

More information: visitstockholm.com; telegraph.co.uk/tt-stockholmhotels.