There is a well preserved gazebo from the late 1700s in the herb garden of the Botanical Garden of Gothenburg (Botaniska Trädgården). With its pyramidal roof, the gazebo is a culturally and historically valuable structure. Inside the gazebo there are murals of great artistic merit. The gazebo was built and owned by the city architect Bengt Wilhelm Carlberg but it was donated to the Röhsska Museum in 1916.
The gazebo was moved to Botaniska Trädgården in the 1950s, and it is owned and managed by the Röhsska Museum.
The gazebo once belonged to the property at Kärralund and designed by the urban architect Bengt Wilhelm Carlberg. According to information from Röhsska Museum, the gazebo was owned and inhabited at a property in Kärralund 1745-1772. In September 1916, Röhsska Konstslöjdmuseet applied to the Drätselkammaren to possess the gazebo (lusthuset) and it was approved in October the same year; and in the following winter, the gazebo was moved to the museum’s courtyard.
The spectacular thing about the gazebo are the murals on the three sides of the walls. The mural on the wall opposite to the door is rich in details of a medieval European city. It shows a garden with tufted hedges, marble sculpture and a fountain. The image is symmetrical and creates an illusion that helps to expand the interior. The other walls have images of ships, stately palaces with canals, quays and parks. The images are sprinkled with people attending to their chores, and walking, and talking.
The gazebo’s exterior was renovated during 2013-2014.
The interior paintings have been cleaned from dirt and dust, preserved and documented in a collaboration between the Röhsska Museum and Gothenburg University in the spring of 2015.
The poet Ibn Quzman is known to have used the word ‘qushaybah’ in a poem ‘Cordoban’ referring to gazebos. In English, the word ‘gazebo’ was first used by the British architects John Halfpenny and William Halfpenny in the book ‘Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste’.
Gazebo is a small building usually placed in a park or bungalow and villa with a garden. Gazebo offers a place to sit and relax and ponder, and a wide view of the surrounding areas. Gazebos are designed in different shapes.
