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MALMO |
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The third largest city in Sweden, MALMÖ , won back for Sweden from
Denmark by Karl X in the seventeenth century, was a handsome city then
and is now, with a cobbled medieval core that has a lived-in, workaday
feel worlds apart from the museum-piece quality of most other Swedish
town centres. With the opening in 2000 of the Øresund Link , a
sensational seventeen-kilometre-long road and rail bridge, Malmö really
is the Swedish gateway from continental Europe, and after years in the
doldrums after the failure of much of its industry, it is enjoying a
revival, and is as lively and up-beat as ever for travellers wanting to
find a cosmopolitan Swedish city outside the capital.
The City
Few places in Sweden are more enjoyable - or more conducive to a
leisurely stroll - than Malmö, with its canals, parks, and largely
pedestrianized streets and squares. Most of the medieval centre was
taken apart in the early sixteenth century to make way for Stortorget ,
a vast market square. It's as impressive today as it must have been when
it first appeared, flanked on one side by the Rådhus , built in 1546 and
covered with statuary and spiky accoutrements; there are tours of the
well-preserved interior (check with the tourist office for times).
Södergatan , Malmö's main pedestrianized shopping street, runs south
from here towards the canal. Behind the Rådhus stands the St Petri Kyrka
(Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 10am-6pm), a fine Gothic church with
an impressively decorative pulpit and a four-tiered altarpiece. Lilla
Torget is everyone's favourite part of the city, a late-sixteenth-century
spin-off from an overcrowded Stortorget, usually full and doing a
roaring trade from jewellery stalls and summer buskers. The southern
side of the square is formed by a row of mid-nineteenth-century brick
and timber warehouses, unremarkable given the other preserved buildings
around, except that they contain the Form Design Centre (Tues-Fri
11am-5pm, Sat 10am-4pm; free), a kind of yuppies' Habitat museum. The
shops around here sell books, antiques and gifts, though the best place
to drop into is the nearby Saluhallen , an excellent indoor market.
Further west still lie the Kungsparken and the Malmöhus (daily 10am/noon-4pm;
40kr), a low fortified castle defended by a wide moat, two circular
keeps and grassy ramparts, raised by Danish king Christian III in 1536.
For a time a prison (Bothwell, third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots,
was the most notable inmate), the castle and its outbuildings now
constitute a series of exhibitions including Malmö's main museum , and
collections covering areas including natural history, science, maritime
history, military life and city-related art, unfortunately with no
information in English. There's a café inside, too, and the grounds,
peppered with small lakes and an old windmill, are good for a stroll.
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