|
| |
|
STOCKHOLM |
| |
|
|
| |
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 red-brick tower (May-Sept daily 10am-4.30pm; 15kr), has
the best fix on the city's layout. The building itself, a flagship of
the National Romantic movement in the 1910s and 1920s, draws heavily on
Swedish materials and themes, exemplified in the cavernous Blue Room,
where the Nobel prize-givings are held, and the Golden Room, where a
précis of Swedish history covers the walls in a gilt mosaic. |
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
