Located in Nuuanu, the Queen Emma Summer Palace conveys a quietude befitting the grace of Hawaiian royalty. Filled with traditional Hawaiian symbols of royalty, ornate European- and Hawaiian- made furnishings and other priceless artifacts, the home and the surrounding grounds recall both the simple pleasures and the elegant lifestyle of Hawaii’s fourth monarch, Kamehameha IV, his Queen Consort Emma, and their son Albert.

On Saturday, the quiet estate, which actually served more as a year-round retreat for the royal family than a summer getaway, celebrates its 40th annual Day at Queen Emma Summer Palace. The day is devoted to remembering the royal family with music, hula, presentations about the property, arts and crafts, cultural practitioners and festivities.

“It’s a big event for us,” said Mahea Bernal of the Daughters of Hawaii, the official caretakers of the estate. “People come and they stay from start to finish. You’re free to move about the property, or sit down and just one after another, hear the Royal Hawaiian Band, Kamehameha School Glee Club, alumni glee club, Punahou School Glee Club. It really is ‘Come and spend a day at Queen Emma Summer Palace.’”

The estate originally consisted of about 65 acres and a six-room, Greek Revival-style home. The home was prefabricated in Boston, shipped to Hawaii and constructed in Nuuanu Valley by businessman John Lewis in 1848, then sold to John Young in 1850. Emma, a daughter of royalty who was raised by an uncle, Dr. Thomas Rooke, was also Young’s niece.

“As a teenager, Queen Emma would come to visit her uncle, and so she was very familiar with this home,” Bernal said.

The estate was named Hanaiakamalama, and was inherited by Queen Emma upon Young’s death in 1857. The royal family would come to spend as much time as possible there, “away from hot and dusty Honolulu,” Bernal said. Nuuanu’s elevation, soothing winds and informal atmosphere were more hospitable than Iolani Palace, just 3 miles away, and much better for the king’s asthma.

“It was a much cooler environment, more relaxing,” said Bernal, 55. “Her son could play on the grounds and they could simply be a family of three.”

The property is now down to about 2 acres, but the grounds are permeated by the essence of Queen Emma, an avid gardener who had overseen the cultivation of the property into a working farm.

“Some of the trees out on the property are the trees that they planted as a family,” Bernal said, referring to several mango trees on the site and a fragrant pak lan tree planted by Prince Albert.

The Queen expanded the home, adding a large room built specially for a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh, the first member of British royalty to visit the islands and the son of Queen Victoria, a friend of Queen Emma. The duke never made it to Hanaiakamalama, though he visited Honolulu in 1869, but the Edinburgh Room became the site for “dances and elegant dinners and affairs here,” Bernal said.

The room has several outstanding pieces of period furniture, in particular a huge display cabinet featuring curved glass and wooden panels, crafted in Germany. Bernal said European visitors immediately recognize its decorative, cathedral-like spires.

Artifacts representing the close connection between the queens of Hawaii and England abound in the house, including a silver christening vessel for Albert that was a gift from Queen Victoria, along with a bracelet containing her picture. The two women corresponded throughout their adult lives. “They would write about their family and their health and things that were happening for about 22 years, until Emma’s death,” Bernal said.

Among the items collected by Queen Emma is her grand piano, built by the Emil Ascherberg company, a German maker that specialized in building pianos for tropical climates. It’s still playable, though it needs tuning. “This is my favorite piece in the home,” said Bernal, who plays a little herself.

Queen Emma was a trained pianist, as was the king, and music was one of many interests they shared, along with reading Shakespeare and the newspaper. The queen donated much of her library — a collection of almost 600 books — to the community, but some of it is on display at the Summer Palace.

On display in another room, now called the cloak room, are large umeke (bowls) used for storage and rare feather cloaks and capes, some reserved for men and women of high rank, and another cloak worn by Kamehameha IV himself. “You see that the native bird feathers, they hold their color till today,” Bernal said.

Not all of the items on display belonged to Queen Emma. Over the years, the Daughters of Hawaii have collected artifacts from several Hawaiian monarchs, including several kahili, the feather standards that denote royalty, from the estate of Queen Liliuokalani.

A somber spirit of family is also present in the home. Albert’s beautiful, hand-carved crib, and his fireman’s outfit, evidence of his love for fire engines, recall his tragic death in 1862 at age 4 from an undetermined illness. The family was devastated by the death, and the king died a year later.

Saturday’s event, which is traditionally the Summer Palace’s biggest fundraiser of the year, will be particularly significant for Connie Sutherland, who organized the inaugural event in 1976 and is chairing this year’s festivities.

Now 72, Sutherland remembers the first Day at Queen Emma’s Summer Palace as “easy” — though she had given birth just a month earlier — because she had helped organize another fair earlier that year and knew many vendors and amateur craftsmen eager to participate. She still has a trunk that she bought from a firefighter that day.

“People did things for their hobby,” she said. “Craft was really a passion that they shared, so you didn’t have professional people. You had people who were doing this for the aloha.”

She said she had “no idea” that the Day at Queen Emma Summer Palace would last so long, but she hopes that people now will respond the way they did 40 years ago.

“You’d say, ‘Come to this thing,’ and they’d come!”