Archbishop's Palace, Trondheim

The palace occupies about one hectare immediately south of Nidaros Cathedral, with its buildings arranged around a large inner courtyard and with parts of a medieval wing still standing. Construction is primarily of stone for the principal medieval sections, while the east wing historically consisted of wooden structures. The site preserves the oldest secular stone building in the Nordic countries, and archaeological work has revealed layers of buildings and activity beneath the standing fabric.

The main north wing faces the cathedral square and contains the archiepiscopal great hall on its eastern upper floor. The hall was completed in the 1170s and was originally reached by a two-flight external staircase built in the continental manner, a design otherwise unique in Norway. That external stair was removed around 1700 and a reconstruction based on archaeological evidence was installed during the restorations of 1962–1975. The great hall’s walls show a remodeling to Renaissance taste carried out in the early 17th century, and traces in the masonry indicate the hall’s original height, later increased after the 1708 fire.

Under the great hall lie two vaulted rooms. One of these, long called the Regalia room and richly painted in Renaissance style in the early 1600s under Governor Claus Daa, was part of the governor’s living quarters and from 1826 housed the Norwegian Crown Jewels. The vaulted ground-floor spaces display these royal items today, while the vaults themselves rest on medieval stonework that was adapted and reused in later periods.

The west portion of the north wing, built around 1250, contained the archbishop’s private chambers, including a workroom and bedroom. Open fireplaces in the ground-floor vaults heated the upper rooms through communicating openings. East and west sections of the north wing link through a gate complex whose ground floor carries the main entrance to the courtyard; the entrance portal incorporates a zig-zag patterned arch that was probably reused from the Romanesque fabric of Nidaros Cathedral. Above the portal an upper vaulted entrance room once connected the private apartments with the great hall.

A gate tower once rose above the entrance. It was rebuilt during early 17th-century restoration to about 48 metres and included an oriel (a projecting window) that gave views toward the cathedral and the square, but that tower and oriel were removed in 1672. Military conversion after 1687 altered the interior volumes: windows in the great hall were blocked, walls were raised and a new floor added so the upper level could store grain and the lower level serve as a gunpowder magazine that could hold up to 900 barrels. The removal of the external double staircase had weakened the south wall and massive buttresses were added in 1706.

The 1708 fire destroyed the roof and the grain above, consuming about 800 cubic metres of grain and some 17 tonnes of hard bread, but it did not ignite the gunpowder magazine below. The east wing’s former wooden buildings, adapted after the 1962–1975 restorations to serve as museum storage for cathedral collections, were reduced to their foundations in the August 1983 blaze. After the fire replacement museum buildings were constructed; the new L-shaped east and south wings opened in 1997 and house the Dommuseum over three levels, partly built above excavated areas where historical fabric was left in place and incorporated into displays.

Archaeology has revealed extensive earlier activity beneath and around the standing structures. Excavations identified more than one hundred earlier buildings on the site and uncovered some 160,000 objects, and the former archiepiscopal mint area produced three superimposed minting workshops, the oldest of which was conserved in situ. West-side buildings from the 18th-century military phase, including Forrådshuset and Lavetthuset, stand partly on older medieval cellars; these stone vaults now form part of the exhibition spaces and display the Crown Jewels.