Villa Baggås

Villa Baggås, one of Saltsjöbaden's landmark buildings, was popularly known as Söderberg's church. The villa was built in 1909 to designs by two of the leading architects of the time, Fritz Ulrich and Edvard Hallquisth, on behalf of Consul General Olof Söderberg. With its monumental location, lavish Art Nouveau architecture and four-storey tower, the villa is highly visible in the landscape, where it resembles a church building. The magazine Idun presents Villa Baggås in 1916: "One enters a hall with beautiful proportions and slightly rounded arches, around which the rooms on the lower floor are grouped. In the middle of the entrance is the large salon, which is divided by a balustrade in part of its length, so that you get a flower room with palm trees near the high windows and a more winter-like part of the large room for socializing. The works of art on the walls are from Hesselbom, O.W. Nilsson and Thörne. Nilsson and Thörne, the latter, who is represented by several panels in the other rooms, has taken his motifs from Consul General Söderberg's property Gryt in Närke."