A couple of weeks ago I was at the high-rise multistorey block building Kronprinsen/The Crown Prince, a building 26 floors high completed in 1964. It’s owned by Hugo Åbergs Fastighetsförvaltning, http://www.abergsfastighet.se, info@abergsfastighet.se. The facing as you can see is blue, and consists of 1.9 million mosaic pieces in various blue nuances, darker blue at the bottom and lighter blue higher up to give the feeling of raising to the skies. The building complex of Kronprinsen contains a mall at the bottom, restaurants, a drug store and liqour store, offices higher up and on the top floor- floor 26 – there’s a luxuary restaurant called Översten/the Colonel. I have dined there during some conferences several times and also been to a wedding banquet up there once. It’s a very nice restaurant, tidy, neat with a conference room section and a dining hall/bar section. The restuarant is renowned and has the best view over Malmoe and Öresund one can get. Since there are windows in three directions the visitors will get a splendid view of many parts of this marvellous city. The restaurant takes everything from eight to 200 guests at a time, and offers their visitors a great variety of assemblies and dishes. There are the ordinary lunch guests, but also schools, politicians, wedding companies, upper class guests etc who tend to book tables up here. The food is high class and can well compete with castle restaurants or old renowned high class restaurants in the rural areas. You find more information about them on http://www.oversten.se, restaurangen@oversten.se. The owners are Monica and Peter Kentell, (+46)40-980650. That married couple moved up here with their new restaurant in 1997 and had before that run the restaurant Drabanten/The Henchman on the top floor of the water tower in Hyllie, southern Malmoe for 25 years.
Kronprinsen/The Crown Prince with the restaurant Översten/The Colonel is situated in the western parts of the Inner City of Malmoe and is named after what existed here before the building was built. At this particular address the Crown Prince’s Hussar Regiment resided between 1897 and 1927. The military cavallry was important for a long time, but with the new technological age the cavallry lost most of its military importance and was closed down in that year 1927. In the beginning of the 20th century there were ca 500 hussars here who took care of and rode about 600 horses. Even if the regiment had been at this address from 1897 their history was far older than that. The hussar regiment was formed in 1757 down on the island of Rügen which still was Swedish then, but they moved to Malmoe in 1772 during the reign of Gustav III. During the first half of the 19th century, in 1822 the crown prince Oscar, who would become king Oscar I and the second king of our now ruling Royal Bernadotte Dynasty was given responsibility for this Malmoe-based cavallry regiment.
Even if the regiment as such ceased to exist in 1927 the memory of it has been kept alive since 1958. Then a society was founded called “Kronprinsens Husarregementes Kamratförening och Minnestropp”, i.e. “The Friend Society and Memory Section of the Crown Prince’s Hussar Regiment”, http://www.husartroppen.nu. The members consist of horse- and military history interested people in the region. They meet every Monday evening during the school year at Malmö Ridklubb/Malmoe Riding Club. Sometimes they also get theory lessons in militaray history and horse care, and then mix it with practice. Sometimes they appear on different festivities to re-enact what the former hussars had looked like. You see one of them in one of my photos below which I took during the national commemoration day on June 6th this year. That regiment and the two kings Oscar I and Oscar II, (the last Swedish king to be crowned and who died in 1907) are those who have given their names to this 26-storey building and the restaurant. Together they commemorate something of the history of this city, and the high class style of the restaurant. It’s expensive, but well worth its money and if you want to get good quality conferences and food Översten is an excellent choice- Not to forget – A room with a view.
Anders Moberg, October 20th 2013
swedish heart and soul 