Volvo Photo Locations Part 98
1961 – Volvo Amazon at Scandic Foresta Hotel on Herserudsvägen on Lidingö near Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪.
1961 – Volvo Amazon at Scandic Foresta Hotel on Herserudsvägen on Lidingö near Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪.
1970 – Volvo 164 at Scandic Foresta Hotel on Herserudsvägen on Lidingö near Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪.
2012 – Hotell Scandic Foresta on Lidingö near Stockholm (Google Streetview)
Foresta is a hotel and conference facility on southern Lidingö.
Foresta, originally called Villa Foresta including the building shown in the picture from 1915, was built for Wilhelmina Skogh as a private residence in the years 1908–1910 when she was CEO of the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm. The villa was built according to examples from medieval knight’s castles that she had seen on her many trips to Italy via the Rhine Valley in Germany. Architects were Ernst Stenhammar and Edvard Bernhard, the same architects who were behind the Grand Hôtel Royal in Stockholm. She named the house after her surname Skogh which means in english ‘forest’ and into Italian: foresta. The castle part is built of limestone from Gotland. The place overlooking Lilla Värtan towards Stockholm reminded her of the view from Fårö near Fårösund where she grew up. In 1922 she sold the property.
1915 – Villa Foresta
After she had left the post of CEO of the Grand Hôtel in December 1910, Skogh used Villa Foresta as a private residence until 1922, at the end also combined with a regular restaurant operation, but the income from the restaurant operation was not sufficient to cover the costs of the large property and her financial situation became precarious. She tried for a time to donate the entire property to the city of Lidingö for use in municipal activities such as a nursing home or similar in return for her to receive an annual annuity as long as she lived, but the city declined the offer citing Lidingö’s strained economy at the time. She was therefore forced to sell the entire property in order to pay off her bank loans and thereby also lost the only source of income she had had in the restaurant business at Foresta. A limited company was formed, which in 1922 took over the property including all fixtures.
In 1931, Anders Sandrew, an entrepreneur in the film industry, bought the building and ran a restaurant there for many years.
1957 – Hotel Foresta on Lidingö (photography by Sune Sundahl)
Builder Nils Nessen bought Foresta in 1954 and opened the hotel in 1957. The original castle-like villa was preserved and the hotel was divided into several buildings designed by architect Hack Kampmann. The interiors were created by the designer and head of NK’s textile chamber Astrid Sampe. Famous guests who have stayed at the hotel include The Beatles and Josephine Baker. In 1977, Brazilian soccerplayer Pele stayed at the Foresta when his team the New York Cosmos visited Stockholm. Nils Nessen ran the hotel until 1978 when he sold the property to TCO.
1964 – The Beatles at Hotell Foresta on Lidingö in Stockholm . Photo by Freddy Lindström
Over the years, Foresta has been expanded with separate hotel buildings behind the original villa and has undergone extensive renovations on several occasions, but the main building has retained its characteristic knight’s castle style and is a well-known feature of Lidingö, clearly visible from the Lidingö Bridge. The originally open terrace at the top of the castle part was glazed after 1929 when Foresta had switched to hotel operations.
In the 1990s, part of the property below Foresta towards the water was sold and cleared to build the terraced condominiums that stand there today.
2016 – Foresta Hotel
Foresta’s hotel operations were run until January 31, 2009 by Förvaltnings AB Foresta within the hotel chain Best Western Hotels. Between 1 February 2009 and Novemebr 2023, the restaurant, conference and hotel operations was ran by the hotel chain Scandic under the name Scandic Foresta. The hotel property was bought in autumn 2014 by the property company Altira AB.
At the end of 2023, it was unclear who will take over Foresta with the restaurant, conference and hotel business. Plans to create senior housing in the complex was denied by the local politicians of Lidingö.
Lidingö is an island in the inner Stockholm archipelago, northeast of Stockholm, Sweden.
Lidingö’s qualities have attracted affluent residents such as Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA. Exclusive regions include the coastal region between Mölna and the east tip of the island, Gåshaga, (known as the “Gold Coast”), and the east tip of the northern part of the horse shoe, called Elfvik. Notwithstanding the fact that many middle-class Swedes have moved to the island, (due to rental apartment construction projects), the municipality remains the third wealthiest in Sweden after Danderyd and Täby.
The seascape at Lidingö shares similarities with that of Seattle, USA and Sydney, Australia, with clear blue skies and waterways. The landscape is one of large forests and open farm land.
The Lidingö summer is limited to the period between the end of May and August, when the air temperature seldom exceeds 25 °C. Sea water temperatures usually peak around 20 °C, in mid July, in the inner parts of the archipelago.
Close to the hotel is the Millesgården located. Millesgården is an art museum and sculpture garden. It is located on the grounds of the home of sculptor Carl Milles and his wife, artist Olga Milles, who are both buried there.
The above picture by Pål-Nils Nilsson was also used in a sales brochure for Hasselblad Cameras.
More information on stockholmslansmuseum.se, www.lidingo.se, wikipediaand www.millesgarden.se
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