The Story of Falsterbo’s Classic Guesthouse Lives On

Tina Nordström and her family moved from Stockholm to Falsterbo in 2008. On their walks through their new hometown, they often passed the old white house with the sign reading “Welcome to Olympia”. It stirred curiosity.

“You never quite knew what it was,” Tina says. “A hotel? A restaurant? Or did someone live there? It always looked so empty.”

In 2024, after several years in London, the family moved back to Falsterbo — and the mysterious house was suddenly for sale. For Tina, it became an opportunity to gather all her interests, skills and experience in one place. And there is plenty of it. She holds a degree in interior architecture from Konstfack, trained as a chef at the renowned Le Cordon Bleu, and has worked as a florist at Prince Carl Philip’s wedding, as a chocolatier, and at a Michelin‑starred restaurant in London.

“What’s beautiful, what tastes good, and making other people happy — that’s probably the common thread in everything I’ve done over the years,” she says.

After the bidding process, in which most prospective buyers wanted to turn Villa Olympia into a private residence, the Nordström family emerged as the new owners. And so it was time to reopen the guesthouse. But it wasn’t quite that simple.

“We thought we were buying a more or less turnkey guesthouse,” Tina explains. “The idea was to repaint, fix a few things and keep most of the original character.”

However, it turned out that the guesthouse had not been open to the public in recent years, and that the new operation was therefore classified as a new‑build project. This also brought new requirements for fire safety and accessibility, which naturally had implications for costs, timelines and the ambition to preserve the original character.

“For example, we couldn’t keep the beautiful old wallpaper because of fire‑safety regulations. Instead, we put up different Josef Frank wallpapers in all the rooms, to at least create a natural link to Falsterbo’s history. And we brought back some of the original furniture. But it was a tough period — really tough.”

In the summer of 2025, Villa Olympia reopened in its new form, with four hotel rooms and a café on the ground floor. Tina and her son Ludwig run the business together, supported by the rest of the family and many young employees — both summer visitors and year‑round residents.

“That’s what I’m most proud of,” Tina says. “That we’ve been able to give so many young people jobs and a platform for their future working lives.”

The garden café, offering home‑baked treats and homemade Italian gelato, was an immediate success. On some days, more than 50 people queued in the garden to buy ice cream, with princess cake and browned butter among the most popular flavours. Still, the uncertainty was there.

“We had no idea if it would work,” Tina says. “Every morning I woke up thinking: today everyone has gone home, no one will come. But people kept coming.”

After the summer season, Villa Olympia continues to live on with coffee‑drinking Falsterbo locals, overnight birdwatchers, afternoon tea and takeaway gelato — and with plans for the future. Asked whether Villa Olympia can be called a life’s work, Tina Nordström answers yes, even though it’s a big word.

“There’s so much you can do here. This place sparks a hundred ideas — flower‑arranging courses, chocolate‑making workshops, after‑beach gatherings, garden growing, selling local crafts and design … But we’re taking it one step at a time and seeing what works.”

Perhaps Villa Olympia’s future will even follow its past and pass on through generations. Son Ludwig, who graduated in 2025 and is now training as a sommelier, replies:

“I’m probably a bit too young to decide that now. But who knows?”

One thing is certain: for now, Villa Olympia retains its honourable place as the only one of Falsterbo’s classic guesthouses to have survived history.

The History of Villa Olympia

Villa Olympia was originally called Villa Sommarbo and was built in 1912 as a summer residence for wholesaler Ludvig Lindgren, at the same time as Falsterbo’s new school was constructed on the neighbouring plot. The architect was Sigfrid Sterner, and the style was inspired by Art Nouveau, National Romanticism and traditional Scanian timber‑framed farmhouses.

In the late 1930s, the house was put up for sale and bought by William and Hanna Svensson, who immediately opened Pensionat Olympia. Summer guests could sleep well and enjoy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Steak with onions was a speciality, and dessert was most often ice cream with strawberries.

The loyal regulars were many, and in 1967 Villa Olympia even appeared on the silver screen, when a short scene in Bo Widerberg’s film Elvira Madigan was shot in the guesthouse garden.

Pensionat Olympia was run by the same family for three generations before Tina Nordström and her family took over.

Source: Här lefva vi lifvets glada dagar! – Erik Magnusson & Frederic Täckström, 2022

Instagram: villa.olympia.falsterbo
Website: www.villaolympia.se