STOCKHOLM comes lauded as
Sweden's most beautiful city, and
apart from some sad central squares
of concrete developments and a
tangled road junction or two, it
lives up to it - it's delightful,
not least as a contrast to the
apparently endless lakes and forests
of the rest of the country. It's
also a remarkably disparate capital,
one whose tracts of water and range
of monumental buildings give it an
ageing, lived-in feel and an
atmosphere quite at odds with its
status as Sweden's most
contemporary, forward-looking city.
Built on fourteen small islands,
Stockholm was a natural site for the
fortifications, erected by one
Birger Jarl in 1255, that grew into
the current city. In the sixteenth
century, the city fell to King
Gustav Vasa, a century later
becoming the centre of the Swedish
trading empire that covered
present-day Scandinavia. Following
the waning of Swedish power it
entered something of a quiet period,
only rising to prominence again in
the nineteenth century when
industrialization sowed the seeds of
the Swedish economic miracle.
The City
The Stadshuset , Hantverkargatan 1
(guided tours: mid-May to Sept daily
10am, noon & 2pm; rest of year
10am & noon; 50kr; T-Centralen),
at the water's edge near Central
Station, and in particular its
gently-tapering 106-metre high...
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