Stortorget (Stockholm)

Stortorget is the oldest square in Stockholm, at the centre of the Gamla Stan island where the city was founded. Ringed by tall, narrow merchant houses painted in ochre, red and green, it is the setting of the 1520 Stockholm Bloodbath, a massacre of Swedish nobles that helped trigger the country's break from Danish rule. The Nobel Prize Museum occupies the old stock exchange on one side. A well stands at the centre, and each December the square hosts a traditional Christmas market.