Stockholm City Hall
Start at the water's edge on Kungsholmen, where Stockholm City Hall rises in dark red brick beside Lake Mälaren, crowned by its 106 metre tower. The city council decided in 1908 to build a municipal hall with banqueting rooms on this plot, after an earlier plan for a new courthouse came to nothing. The architect Ragnar Östberg needed 15 years to finish it, and it opened on Midsummer Eve, 23 June 1923, four hundred years after Gustav Vasa entered Stockholm.
Look at the arcades along the water and the tall tower: Östberg is said to have had the Doge's Palace and the campanile of St Mark's in Venice in mind. He blended Italian Renaissance, Nordic Gothic and Islamic art into a style of his own, and the specially made dark red brick was central to it. More than a million bricks were shaped by hand and almost seven million by machine. The project has been called the last true building lodge in Sweden, and it ranks among the country's leading works of National Romanticism.
When it opened, the public and Östberg's fellow architects greeted it with ovations, though some critics found it old-fashioned. A long list of artists decorated it, among them Prince Eugen, Carl Eldh, Einar Forseth and the furniture designer Carl Malmsten. It became Östberg's masterpiece, and since 2025 it has been part of Sweden's cultural canon.
This is a working building: the city council meets here and the city's commissioners have their offices inside. Its best-known rooms are the Blue Hall, the Golden Hall and the Prince's Gallery, and the building is famous as the setting for the annual Nobel festivities. You see them on a paid guided tour, which is worth it if the Nobel connection or decorative art appeals to you.
From here it is 880 metres, about 12 minutes, to the Riksdag Building: from the city's government to the nation's parliament.




















