| Destination: SWEDEN | |||||||||||||||||||
| Things To Know
City of Islands
Compass Bearings Seeing Stockholm Stockholmers Subway Art |
City of Islands Modern Stockholm is a large, exhilarating city. The scale of its public buildings is monumental, the bustle of its streets all-embracing; yet the city is given a uniquely open character by the thousands of islands in its archipelago and by the mirror images of lakes that pepper its hinterland. Stockholm stands on 14 interlocking islands; the city is a mosaic of land, lake and waterway stitched together by 57 bridges, making it a vibrant urban environment. Gamla Stan is the heart of old Stockholm, a dramatic and fascinating expression of heritage and tradition. It stands on an island in the middle of the narrow bottleneck channel between the salty Baltic Sea and the inland freshwater lake of Mälaren. To the south is the hilly island of Södermalm, a suburban area with generous expanses of grass and trees. North of Gamla Stan and the buildings of state (the Royal Palace and the Parliament House) is Norrmalm, the business and commercial district. This is the heart of the modern city - glass, steel, concrete and good Swedish design - a cityscape of towering buildings, stylish shopping malls, busy streets and traffic-free concourses that satisfy the demands of both vehicles and pedestrians. East of Norrmalm is the residential district of Östermalm and the city's island park, Djurgården, the world's first National City Park. To the west, the island mosaic spreads across the waters of Lake Mälaren, Stockholm's magnificent “inland” sea. |
|
|||||||||||||||||
