Architecture in Stockholm: buildings worth seeing from the 17th century to today

The most notable architecture in Stockholm includes Stockholm Palace, Riddarhuset (the House of Nobility), City Hall, the City Library and the Woodland Cemetery, which, together with Drottningholm, are World Heritage Sites. The city is unusually rich in three periods: the Baroque of the Swedish Great Power period in the 17th century, National Romanticism and the classicism of the 1920s around 1900–1930, and post-war Modernism. The buildings follow here in chronological order, and the map below shows where they are.

Facts

The Great Power period: palaces and noble townhouses

Stockholm became a European capital in the 17th century, when Sweden was a great power and the nobility built palaces in the city. Riddarhuset in Gamla Stan (the Old Town), built in 1641–1674, was the meeting house of the nobility and has one of the best-known säteri roofs (Swedish manor-house roofs) in the country. After the old castle of Tre Kronor burned down in 1697, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger designed a new palace modelled on Roman city palaces: a closed square around a courtyard with four different façades. War meant that the building dragged on, and the royal family moved in only in 1754.

Out on Lovön, the dowager queen Hedvig Eleonora had Tessin the Elder build Drottningholm Palace from 1662, with a Baroque garden on French lines. On the same island lies the Palace Theatre from 1766, with its original stage machinery still in place, and the Rococo Chinese Pavilion. People like to get there by boat from Stadshusbron.

The Gustavian period and the 19th century

Gustav III had the pavilion in Haga Park built in 1787–1792, a simple and light building with an interior inspired by the wall paintings of Pompeii; one of the major works of the Gustavian style. On Djurgården stands Karl XIV Johan's Rosendal Palace from the 1820s, low and elegant and with its interior almost entirely preserved.

During the 19th century the city grew. The Nationalmuseum on Blasieholmen, designed by Friedrich August Stüler and completed in 1866, is Neo-Renaissance after Italian palaces. The Nordic Museum by Isak Gustaf Clason, built in 1888–1907, takes the Vasa castles as its model, and the Riksdag building on Helgeandsholmen was given a semicircular colonnaded façade facing Norrbro. At the same time the 'stone city' was built in Östermalm, Vasastan and Södermalm, with richly decorated five-storey buildings around closed courtyards.

The turn of the century: Art Nouveau and National Romanticism

Around 1900 Stockholm became one of the most exciting architectural cities in the Nordic countries. The Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) at Nybroplan, opened in 1908, is Swedish Art Nouveau in white marble and gold. The banker Ernest Thiel had Ferdinand Boberg build the Thiel Gallery at the far end of Djurgården for his collection of Nordic art. The Stockholm Olympic Stadium was built for the 1912 Olympic Games and looks like a medieval castle in brick.

National Romanticism reached its peak with City Hall by Ragnar Östberg, built in 1911–1923 on Riddarfjärden with a tower 106 metres high and the Blue Hall, where the Nobel banquet is held. Its neighbour, the Court House, recalls Vadstena Castle, the Engelbrekt Church rises on a rock in Lärkstaden and the Högalid Church is visible with its two towers over Södermalm. The difference between the styles is explained in the guide to Art Nouveau and National Romanticism.

The 1920s and Functionalism

During the 1920s classicism was simplified into something light and elegant that abroad was given the name Swedish Grace. Ivar Tengbom designed the Concert Hall at Hötorget, a blue cube with ten tall columns where the Nobel Prizes are presented, and the Match Palace, Ivar Kreuger's headquarters. Gunnar Asplund designed the City Library, a cylinder on a cube, and, together with Sigurd Lewerentz, the Woodland Cemetery in Enskede, a landscape of pine forest, hills and chapels that became a World Heritage Site in 1994.

In the summer of 1930 Functionalism made its breakthrough with the Stockholm Exhibition at Djurgårdsbrunnsviken, with Asplund as chief architect. The pavilions were demolished after the exhibition, but the ideas of light, air and rational housing became those of the Swedish welfare state, the 'people's home'. The background can be found in the guide to Functionalism.

The post-war period and the present

After the Second World War the Norrmalm city centre was rebuilt. The five Hötorget skyscrapers along Sveavägen became the symbol of the transformation, and the Kulturhuset by Peter Celsing at Sergels torg, completed in 1974, was given a long glass façade facing the square; the Riksdag met in the building between 1971 and 1983. In the suburbs Vällingby grew up around 1954 as an ABC town with work, housing and a centre, and in Björkhagen Sigurd Lewerentz built St Mark's Church of whole bricks, one of the masterpieces of Swedish post-war architecture.

The transformation of Norrmalm, the so-called Norrmalm Regulation, required large parts of the old Klara neighbourhoods to be demolished between the 1950s and the 1970s, and it is still debated. The centrepoint is Sergels torg on two levels, with Edvin Öhrström's glass sculpture Kristallvertikalaccent from 1974. The place shows the post-war faith in traffic separation and large-scale planning, the same ideas that shaped the suburbs and later the Million Programme.

Postmodernism is most visible in Bofill's Arch at Södra station from 1992, a semicircular residential block with classical forms on a giant scale. On Skeppsholmen Rafael Moneo designed the Moderna Museet, opened in 1998, as a row of low pavilions with pyramid-shaped lanterns.

Planning the walk

Most of it can be seen on foot in a day. Start in Gamla Stan at the Palace and Riddarhuset, cross Norrbro past the Riksdag building to the Nationalmuseum and Dramaten, and continue via Kulturhuset and the Hötorget skyscrapers to the Concert Hall. The City Library lies a little further up Sveavägen. City Hall and the Court House on Kungsholmen are a short walk from the Central Station, and Djurgården with the Nordic Museum, Rosendal and the Thiel Gallery is a half-day of its own.

Drottningholm, the Woodland Cemetery, Vällingby and St Mark's Church lie further out but can be reached by boat or metro. All the buildings can be found on the map with other sights in the Nordic countries, and the Swedish timeline in architectural history shows where they fit in.

Ten not to miss

Exercise

Which of the buildings in Stockholm did Gunnar Asplund design?