Hildasholm, Dalarna Travel Guide

A wedding gift turned cultural house

Hildasholm began as a personal commission in 1910 when Swedish physician and writer Axel Munthe gave the house to his English wife, Hilda Pennington Mellor. The building retains its early-1900s layout and many original interiors, so its rooms read like a time capsule of tastes that mix domestic comfort with international influences from the couple’s travels. Period furnishings, intimate parlours and carefully placed artworks combine to create a lived-in atmosphere rather than a staged museum environment.

Garden rooms that unfold like chapters

Surrounding the house is a two-hectare garden composed of distinct ‘rooms’—a fountain garden, a courtyard with clipped edges, a gazebo overlooking Österviken, and sloped botanical terraces. Hilda designed the beds and paths with influences from English and continental traditions, favouring peonies, delphiniums and mixed herbaceous borders. Garden walls of earth bricks, small ponds and sculptural pieces such as the Diana figure provide focal points that reward slow wandering and close observation.

Sculptures, pets and personal stories in the landscape

Scattered through the park are small sculptural details and markers that connect the household to personal stories: carved names of family pets on stones near the gazebo, a small lead angel set in a ravine and a compact family pet cemetery. These intimate traces transform the grounds from a purely decorative estate into a layered domestic landscape in which memory and horticulture coexist.

The site’s relationship with Lake Siljan

Hildasholm sits close to the shore of Lake Siljan and uses this lakeside setting as an organizing element. The southern-facing gazebo and some of the garden slopes orient toward water vistas across the bay, while mature trees frame views and provide dappled shade. The proximity to water softens the light and extends the sense of place beyond garden walls, linking cultivated spaces to the wider lakeside landscape.

Botanical interest and seasonal character

Planting at Hildasholm emphasises traditional cottage-garden species and several rarer local finds once collected for the family’s botanical plots. The estate was historically known for experiments with orchids and woodland species; remnants of these plantings survive in the slopes and sheltered pockets. The gardens change dramatically with the seasons—lush and perfumed in summer, crisp and structural in autumn, and quietly spare in winter—making repeat visits revealing.

Visitor experience and atmosphere

The overall impression is one of private-scale charm rather than grandiosity: rooms and paths designed for strolling, quiet seating areas beneath trees, and a calm pace that encourages noticing small things—textured walls, the sound of water, the scent of old wood and flowers. The combination of well-preserved interiors and imaginative outdoor rooms creates a layered cultural landscape that feels both domestic and curated, ideal for anyone interested in garden design, early 20th-century domestic life or lakeside settings.