{ "landmarks": [ { "name": "Stadshuset", "lat": 59.32754, "lon": 18.05436, "line": "Stockholm City Hall on the northern shore, its tower crowned by the three golden crowns." }, { "name": "Riddarholmen", "lat": 59.32478, "lon": 18.06489, "line": "Riddarholmen to the east, under the cast-iron spire of Riddarholmen Church." }, { "name": "Gamla stan", "lat": 59.3251, "lon": 18.0686, "line": "Behind it rises Gamla stan, Stockholm's old town." }, { "name": "Västerbron", "lat": 59.3266, "lon": 18.0264, "line": "Västerbron, the steel arch spanning the western end of the bay." }, { "name": "Långholmen", "lat": 59.32194, "lon": 18.03028, "line": "Långholmen, the green island that once held the city's prison, now a park." } ], "tourSites": [ { "name": "Kungliga slottet", "lat": 59.3268, "lon": 18.0717, "line": "The Royal Palace rises straight from the water on the edge of Gamla stan, built on the foundations of the Tre Kronor castle that burned in 1697. It counts some fourteen hundred rooms, and fewer than half of them have windows. The royal guard has stood watch here in unbroken succession since 1523." }, { "name": "Skeppsholmen", "lat": 59.3253, "lon": 18.0787, "line": "Skeppsholmen was the navy's island from 1634 until 1968, and is now Stockholm's island of museums. At the quay lies the full-rigger af Chapman, launched in England in 1888, which sailed the oceans as a cargo and training ship and has been moored at this same berth since 1949." }, { "name": "Strandvägen", "lat": 59.332, "lon": 18.084, "line": "Strandvägen, Stockholm's parade waterfront. A century and a half ago this was a muddy shore of sheds and timber yards; fifteen years of quay building turned it into an esplanade of grand facades, its eastern reach finished for the great exhibition of 1897." }, { "name": "Vasamuseet", "lat": 59.328, "lon": 18.0916, "line": "The Vasa Museum stands over the warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. Found again in 1956 and raised in 1961, she survived 333 years under water because the brackish Baltic has no shipworm — the ship inside is about ninety-eight per cent original." }, { "name": "Gröna Lund", "lat": 59.3234, "lon": 18.0965, "line": "Gröna Lund, Sweden's oldest amusement park, has stood on this waterfront since 1883. It takes its name from an eighteenth-century tavern that the poet Bellman sang about — so the roller coasters are, in a way, named after a drinking song." }, { "name": "Skansen", "lat": 59.326, "lon": 18.1035, "line": "On the heights of Djurgården lies Skansen, the world's oldest open-air museum, opened in 1891 — so influential that in several languages the word skansen simply means an open-air museum. Its brick tower Bredablick is older than the museum itself." }, { "name": "Beckholmen", "lat": 59.3218, "lon": 18.0952, "line": "Beckholmen is the tar island: from the 1630s, pitch for wooden fleets was boiled here, and Stockholm Tar became an export name across Europe. The dry docks were blasted out of the rock from 1848, and when the warship Vasa rose from the seabed in 1961 it was to this island she was towed. Today the yard is the home port of the GSYS fleet that races on these waters." }, { "name": "Fjäderholmarna", "lat": 59.323, "lon": 18.155, "line": "The Fjäderholmarna islands are the doorstep of the Stockholm archipelago. Taverns stood here from the 1740s, the last stop for fishermen and boatmen sailing in to market; the navy then closed the islands to the public until the 1970s. Out this way lies Sandhamn, from where the Round Gotland Race, the world's largest annual offshore race, sends its fleet each summer." }, { "name": "Hagaparken", "lat": 59.361, "lon": 18.043, "line": "Hagaparken on Brunnsviken was Gustav the Third's unfinished dream: of his grand palace only the cellar foundations were ever built, for the king was assassinated in 1792. The Copper Tents that remain are stage scenery, painted sheet metal dressed as a Roman camp, and today's Haga Palace is the home of the Crown Princess and her family." }, { "name": "Drottningholm", "lat": 59.3217, "lon": 17.8866, "line": "Drottningholm Palace, a World Heritage site, has been the residence of the royal family since 1981. Its court theatre of 1766 still performs with the original stage machinery, wooden wave machines and all — rediscovered in 1921 after a century as a furniture store." }, { "name": "Mälaren", "lat": 59.33, "lon": 17.72, "line": "We are flying west over Lake Mälaren, Sweden's third largest lake, whose surface stands about seventy centimetres above the sea. For a thousand years this was the water highway of central Sweden, and controlling its meeting with the Baltic is the whole reason Stockholm exists." }, { "name": "Birka", "lat": 59.3345, "lon": 17.5448, "line": "On the island of Björkö lies Birka, Sweden's first town and a World Heritage site: a Viking trading place from the eighth century, where the monk Ansgar arrived on his mission in 829. One of its warrior graves, excavated in 1878 and long assumed to hold a man, was shown by DNA analysis in 2017 to hold a woman, buried with a full set of weapons and two horses." }, { "name": "Skeppsgården", "lat": 59.3296, "lon": 18.0785, "tour": "vasa", "line": "This is the story of the warship Vasa. On the shore of Blasieholmen, where the National Museum now stands, lay the royal shipyard, and here she was built from 1626 — over a thousand oaks went into her hull." }, { "name": "Slottskajen", "lat": 59.3258, "lon": 18.0745, "tour": "vasa", "line": "Below the old Tre Kronor castle she was rigged, ballasted and armed through the winter: sixty-four bronze guns on two decks — for a short while the most powerfully armed warship in the world." }, { "name": "Tranbodarna", "lat": 59.3215, "lon": 18.0735, "tour": "vasa", "line": "On Sunday the tenth of August 1628 she was warped along the waterfront to Tranbodarna, near today's Slussen. There Vasa set four of her ten sails, fired a salute, and stood out on her maiden voyage." }, { "name": "Vasa's last water", "lat": 59.3223, "lon": 18.0925, "tour": "vasa", "line": "Here, off Beckholmen, a gust from the heights of Södermalm heeled her over; water poured in through the open gunports, and before thousands of onlookers Vasa went down, barely a nautical mile into her voyage. Around thirty people died — yet no one was ever convicted, for the ship had been built to the king's own approved dimensions." }, { "name": "Beckholmens docka", "lat": 59.3218, "lon": 18.0952, "tour": "vasa", "line": "The salvage came in two acts. Already in the 1660s, divers in a diving bell raised some fifty of her bronze guns from thirty metres down; then on 24 April 1961, after 333 years, Vasa broke the surface, and three weeks later she was floated into the dry dock here on Beckholmen." }, { "name": "Vasamuseet", "lat": 59.3285, "lon": 18.0905, "tour": "vasa", "line": "And here she is now. The Vasa Museum keeps her almost entirely original, the world's only preserved seventeenth-century warship, a few hundred metres from the water that took her — the story ends within sight of where it began." }, { "name": "Lidingö Runt", "lat": 59.366, "lon": 18.105, "tour": "lidingo", "line": "We cross to Lidingö and the waters of Lidingö Runt, the biggest annual regatta on Sweden's east coast, sailed around this island since 1949. In its record year seven hundred boats took the start." }, { "name": "Lidingö Runt", "lat": 59.342, "lon": 18.15, "tour": "lidingo" }, { "name": "Lidingö Runt", "lat": 59.345, "lon": 18.23, "tour": "lidingo" }, { "name": "Lidingö Runt", "lat": 59.38, "lon": 18.25, "tour": "lidingo", "line": "Out here the fleet rounds the island's seaward shore. For one day each spring these fairways fill with sails, from family cruisers to grand-prix racers, all racing the same course around the island." }, { "name": "Lidingö Runt", "lat": 59.4, "lon": 18.16, "tour": "lidingo" }, { "name": "Lidingö Runt", "lat": 59.385, "lon": 18.11, "tour": "lidingo" } ] }