Few classic structures in the world are more magnificently placed than the palace: it stands high up, wide gardens stretch around, and through them the great portico looks down along the broad, straight, well-gardened, chief street of the town, called after Karl Johan. Neither the architecture of the building nor the laying out of the gardens is at all worthy of the superb position, but the effect nevertheless is most striking. Were the Palace of Stockholm (p. 203) placed here and the park laid out on the same lines as the gardens of Versailles, the great central thoroughfare of the city being made a wide boulevard to match, there might have risen on this spot one of the most monumental and stately of all European cities. Unfortunately the Palace was only erected in 1825-48--when architecture was at its lowest ebb in every part of the western world--and neither material nor design is good. Karl Johans Gade, at whose other end is the Hoved Banegaard, or chief railway station, has gardens for a section of its length, but for the most part it is unfortunately bordered by houses of brick and stucco that rise straight from the pavements. Nevertheless the grandeur of the encircling mountains obliterates all minor defects. In front of the Palace, looking along the great street that bears his name, is a statue to Karl Johan, better known to the world perhaps as Bernadotte, Napoleon's marshal, who forgot his own country and his father's house, to champion the liberties of the North, Scandinavian in all but speech. Where end the gardens by the street of Karl Johan rises the Storthings-Bygning, or the seat of a parliament, some of whose members reside within the Arctic Line. Across the same noble thoroughfare, nearer the Palace, stand face to face the University, famed for many a distinguished name and also for the possession of viking ships, and the National Theatre, renowned for its connection with the great name of the dramatist whose appearance was tersely summed up by Björnson:-- Tense and lean, the colour of gypsum, Behind a vast coal-black beard, Henrik Ibsen. to whom a statue rises in the grounds. His charming play the _Dolls House_ (1879) was one of the first of his works to gain a reputation through the world, while it started, or stirred, about woman and her place a discussion whose end is not in sight, and also did very much to naturalise all modern drama by abolishing such devices as soliloquies, and attempting to set upon the stage what really happens in the world.[44]