Abisko

Perched on Sweden’s northern border with Norway 200km north of the Arctic Circle, tiny Abisko is the best base for exploring breathtaking sub-arctic landscapes and national parks. The tundra, cut through by lakes, is a dramatic sight any time of year under changing skies.

Eksjö

Eksjö is considered Sweden’s best-preserved example of a wooden town. There are dozens of listed buildings, giving Eksjö a high cultural value even by European standards. It’s not a mass tourism destination, which adds to its appeal for travellers seeking rural flavour in the forests of Småland. 

Falun

For centuries Falun was the source of Sweden’s wealth in copper and was the biggest source of the metal in Europe. The town’s giant pit is now UNESCO world heritage-listed and a museum tells the story of a millennium of prosperity and technological development.

Around the mine are the buildings used by the miners and many of their wooden cottages, painted in the reddish-brown iron oxide coating that also came from the mine and was given the town’s name – faluröd.

Gällivare

Sweden’s iron-ore mining in the far north began in nearby Malmberget and Gällivare is now the junction of Sweden’s two northern rail lines and a winter sport centre.

Gävle

Gävle is a leafy and graceful city founded in the 15th century and the oldest in the part of Sweden known as Norrland. There is a small castle and the part of its old settlement that has been preserved is a precious reminder of how wooden towns used to look in Sweden.

The preserved precinct includes the childhood home of the tragic US labour activist Joe Hill.

Gothenburg (Göteborg)

Sweden’s second city is one of its youngest. The country needed a west-facing seaport in the 17th century and the king sanctioned the building of a fortified city with canals on the Dutch model.

Gothenburg became the base for Swedish enterprises in oriental trade and a strategic strongpoint in the Baltic. Today it is a centre of industry, business and culture and headquarters of international names such as Volvo, Ericsson and SKF.

Helsingborg

Helsingborg has been at the flashpoint of Swedish and Danish history for centuries, perched at the narrowest point of the strait between the two countries. The past has left its mark in the form of historical buildings and the tower Kärnan, which dominates the Öresund. Today a short ferry link with Denmark makes it a point connecting the countries.

Jönköping & Huskvarna

These twin cities at the southern tip of Vättern are in a picturesque setting, but also gave Sweden one of its enduring contributions, the safety match, and some of the world’s most popular high-performance motorcycles and manufactured products.

Kalmar

Welcome to the city that moved and became a fortress. Kalmar’s medieval town was replanned as a Baroque stronghold against Denmark and a centre for the Swedish fleet. The newer town is one of the best-preserved historical centres in Sweden and its stone-paved streets are lined with heritage buildings. Kalmar is also the jumping-off point for visits to the fascinating Baltic island Öland.

The city’s powerful and well restored Renaissance castle is one of the premier Swedish attractions and its museum houses the famous navel wreck Kronan, second only to the Vasa in Stockholm.

Karlskrona

Karlskrona is recognised by UNESCO for its beauty and historical value. The fully planned Baroque city succeeded Kalmar as Sweden’s naval centre and remains the base of its national fleet.

The city’s world-heritage listing covers the port and multiple buildings and the its churches are especially highly prized. Its archipelago site adds to the scenic experience.

Karlstad

The centre of Värmland is one of Sweden’s beautiful towns. Its position connects it with vast expanses of surrounding forest and the country’s largest lake, Vänern.

Kiruna

The arctic town of Kiruna is made of iron. Its vast ore mine is the biggest in Europe, having yielded a billion tonnes over more than a century. The site also promises a fortune in rare-earth minerals and the town is planned for a move to allow for more digging. But its location makes it a winter sport and summer adventure centre.

Linköping

Linköping has one of Sweden’s medieval cathedrals and close links with the country’s legendary past. It also has one of the best Swedish open-air museums. But today it is a forward-looking centre of high technology. 

Luleå

The archipelago of Luleå has more than 1,000 islands and freezes over each winter because it’s so close to the Arctic Circle. But northern Swedes are a hardy bunch and Luleå’s historical wooden town Gammelstad is one of Sweden’s world-heritage sites, a wholly preserved village of more than 400 wooden buildings used by people just for their visits to a 15th century church.

Lund

Sweden’s only Romanesque cathedral is Lund’s landmark. Although Lund did not start its history as a Swedish city, it has become one of the country’s most visited places for its atmosphere, its museums, and its beauty. 

Lund must be almost unique for having its open-air museum, Kulturen, right at its centre. But its university also forms part of the city core, with its churches making a graceful and walkable city centre.

Malmö

Malmö is one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe, with a close road and rail connection with Copenhagen across the Öresund. But it is worth more than a day’s visit because of its diversity and culture, its fascinating Renaissance castle Malmöhus, its squares and its historic buildings.

Bike-friendly Malmö is an urban experiment that is trying to balance old and new as Sweden reaches into an uncertain future.

Mora

Mora on the vast lake Siljan is best known for its cross-country ski race Vasaloppet, the largest of its type in the world. The story behind the race is the critical point of Swedish history.

But there is much more to Mora, including its beautiful location, its buildings, and its intimate links with the life of Sweden’s greatest artist, Anders Zorn.

Norrköping

The site of Norrköping, on flowing streams, made it a valuable place of industry and it grew into a textile and papermaking centre. The history of its working culture is now celebrated in the town by a museum, and nearby is Scandinavia’s largest zoo and wildlife park.

Öland

Öland, the narrowest island in Europe, was almost a world of its own in prehistoric times. Sweden is a land of prehistoric remains and monuments, but Öland has more of them, and in greater variety, than any part of Sweden, plus the mysterious forts that served as shields from the uncertain fortunes that went with the Baltic Sea.

Öland is also a unique natural landscape prized by naturalists and has its own prized world-heritage area.

Örebro

A city in central Sweden grew up around a medieval and Renaissance castle. It became a stronghold for Swedish resistance to Demark and a centre of the Swedish Reformation. Lake and canal linkages later developed it as a graceful inland port. Wealth flowed into Örebro and today travellers can visit a powerful castle and one of Sweden’s best open-air museums. 

Östersund

Östersund is the focal point of north central Sweden, on the rail link with Trondheim and the southern terminus of the Inlandsbanan summer railway to the far north.

Sala

Silver brought Sweden much of its national wealth and coinage, and that silver was mined in Sala. The area where Sala silvergruva shafts were dug has been preserved as an attraction and the waterways and pondages that supported them shaped a peaceful town now known for its white wooden bridges. But it also has a unique place in Swedish history as the little town where the Swedish royal court retreated at a time of plague.

Sigtuna

Sigtuna is usually called Sweden’s first town and more than any other it gives visitors a sense of Swedish history. It has the country’s oldest street, some of its first stone churches, a collection of at least 30 runestones, and a tiny building that rates one of Sweden’s oldest unchanged town halls.

Simrishamn

The small fishing port can claim medieval churches, runestones and coloured cottages, but the area’s unique attraction is a giant Bronze Age grave mound complex at nearby Kivik, showing carved images from Sweden’s mysterious past.

Skara

Skara in Västergötland was one of Sweden’s early bishoprics and power centres, but today is a quiet town dominated by a cathedral founded in at least the 11th century. The abbey of Varnhem nearby is one of Sweden’s oldest and cranes migrating from southern Europe gather near Skara in March and April.

Stockholm

The capital on the water makes for one of Scandinavia’s spectacular sights. Stockholm’s old town, known in Swedish as Gamla Stan, juts out into the flow around Riddarfjärden, why why the medieval settlers felt it would be a secure place.

Stockholm today is fast, and growing even faster. But this does mean there are no remnants of its heritage to enjoy, no green spaces to admire and spend quality time in. Graceful Djurgården, with the world’s oldest open-air museum Skansen, or the old streets around Vita Bergen are examples of the best spaces Stockholm has to offer.

The other great attractions include Vasamuseet, where Sweden’s ill-fated 17th century flagship is preserved in one of the world’s great maritime museums. Statens Historiska Museum makes sense of Swedish history from long before the Viking Age. Stockholms Stadsmuseet, where visitors can get a city perspective, is free to enter. You can even follow the career of Abba, the worldwide pop success that now has its own museum.

Inner Stockholm is dominated by Kungliga slottet, the Baroque royal palace and its various museums. Visitors can also enjoy a trip out into the rocky archipelago of about 30,000 islands.

Sundsvall

Sundsvall is the city that kept coming back, being rebuilt four times after fires. Forestry drove much of its port development, but the response to repeated fires decided the civic leaders to rebuild in stone. Today the Kulturmagasinet is one of Sweden’s most admired redevelopments of stone buildings for community use.

Tanum

Nowhere in the world is there a sight like the rock carvings dotted through the parish of Tanum, not far from Sweden’s Norwegian border. These hällristningar come mostly from the Bronze Age and are in several parts of Sweden, but the Tanum carvings, with their ritual significance and siting near ancient waterways, are the most impressive and have earned UNESCO world-heritage listing.

Trelleborg

Trelleborg is Sweden’s most southerly town and an important ferry port for Baltic Sea traffic, but its status as an attraction has grown since the reconstruction of a Viking Age ring fort.

Umeå

Despite being 63 degrees north, Umeå has kept growing since the 17th century and is expected to keep expanding. Attractions include the surrounding nature and museums, including the world’s largest guitar collection in private hands.

Uppsala

Sweden’s first great power centre was around Uppsala. Today Uppsala’s cathedral remains the home of the Swedish church and Uppsala was where Sweden’s first university was founded.

Uppsala has never lost its prestige and retains the ambience of a graceful university city. Its 17th century Gustavianum building, Carolina Rediviva library, Linneanum orangery, castle and cathedral give it gravitas and character.

But outside the city centre is the place where it all began, an extraordinary burial site dominated by three great mounds that was described in medieval times as the pagan worship centre of Sweden.

Vadstena

Vadstena on the shores of Vättern was a place of power in Sweden’s medieval history, but has become best known as the place where St Birgitta set up her order of monks and nuns. It is the site of one of the few Swedish Renaissance castles and Sweden’s oldest town hall, but the past lives in every street.

Västerås

The technology city on Mälaren is actually one of Sweden’s oldest centres and has one of its oldest cathedrals and a small castle.

Older still, however, is the site known as Anundshög, a short bus ride east of the city centre. Anundshög was a power centre where burial mounds, ship-setting graves and a large runestone come together with an alignment from the Eriksgata, Sweden’s early medieval processional way for kings.

Visby

The Hanseatic League grew in Germany, but the Swedish port of Visby on Gotland became the league’s key point in the centre of the Baltic. Visby today is a world-heritage treasure with preserved town walls and fascinating stone-paved medieval streets.

A visit to Visby is a must and a few hours’ ferry travel from Stockholm puts visitors in a world of strange carved picture stones unique to independent-minded Gotland, ruined medieval churches, museums and stark island landscapes. The key to understanding Visby is the fact that its strategic position made it firecely contested and not always Swedish.

Ystad

Ystad became known to the world as the setting for crime novels and TV series based on the fictional detective Kurt Wallander. But there was real crime in the small port for centuries, in the form of smuggling. Otherwise it has an intriguing history realised by characteristic Baltic Sea architecture.