Sæterhytten

Sæterhytten stands on Dronningberget, the hill in the public park at Bygdøy Kongsgård, Oslo. The house wears the early Swiss style, and from its windows you look out over Frognerkilen and Ekebergåsen. It has lived four lives: bathhouse, café, restaurant, and summer venue.

It began in 1851 as a royal bathhouse, floating on a barge off Oscarshall's beach. Peter Høier Holtermann designed it in the same years as the pleasure palace nearby. The royals had the barge towed around the bay wherever a swim called. Shipworms gnawed the hull, repairs grew costly, and the answer was a garden pavilion on dry land. In 1862 it came ashore up here, at Queen Louise's request or perhaps as her husband King Karl XV's gift. A music pavilion followed in 1866, and the building started as a café serving dairy produce and light alcoholic drinks. In 1881 a cellar and a kitchen at the north end turned it into a restaurant. A canvas dining tent gave way in the late 1880s to the glassed-in veranda still in place today. Popularity lasted until the Second World War, then sank under car traffic and neglect.

The Norwegian government gave the royal couple a full restoration for their seventieth birthdays in 2007. By May 2011 the building stood in its nineteenth-century form, with the park around it restyled to match. These days the house takes private summer gatherings, twenty to forty guests at a time, behind panoramic windows. A small fireplace room serves the buffets, and out front an octagonal pavilion holds music or dancing. Underfloor heating keeps out the chill on spring and autumn evenings. Three generations of royal women named Louise attended the 1862 opening. Henrik Ibsen wrote a poem to mark the day. Three L's on the gable still stand for them.