Gamla Stan

Where it sits. Gamla Stan is the old town of Stockholm, occupying the island of Stadsholmen in the channel where Lake Mälaren empties into the Baltic, together with the adjoining islets of Riddarholmen, Helgeandsholmen and Strömsborg. Until 1980 its official name was Staden mellan broarna, the town between the bridges, which describes it exactly: the island is walkable end to end in fifteen minutes and connected on all sides. About 3,000 people live there. Stockholm was founded here in the thirteenth century, at a point narrow enough to control shipping between the lake system and the sea, and the street plan still follows the medieval lines, with two long streets running the length of the island and a ladder of alleys crossing between them.

The buildings that matter. The Royal Palace occupies the northern third of the island, built after the medieval Tre Kronor castle burned in 1697 and completed in 1754 to designs by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger; it runs to more than 600 rooms and is still the monarch's official residence. Storkyrkan, the cathedral next to it, is first recorded in 1279 and holds Bernt Notke's carved Saint George and the Dragon of 1489, an oak and elk-antler group of extraordinary violence for a devotional object. On Riddarholmen, the former Greyfriars church is the burial place of Swedish monarchs, its cast-iron openwork spire visible from across the water. Stortorget, the main square, is lined with narrow gabled merchant houses in ochre, red and cream.

The blood in the square. Stortorget is where the Stockholm Bloodbath took place in November 1520, when the Danish king Christian II had roughly eighty of the Swedish nobility and clergy executed after promising amnesty. The massacre triggered the rebellion that ended the Kalmar Union and put Gustav Vasa on the throne, which makes this small cobbled square arguably the birthplace of the modern Swedish state. The building on its northern side, the Stock Exchange completed in 1778 to designs by Erik Palmstedt, now houses the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Library and the Nobel Prize Museum, which opened in 2001.

Millennium, and where it actually is. Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels are set in Stockholm, and both the 2009 Swedish trilogy and David Fincher's 2011 film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were shot in the city, but the geography is deliberately not this one. Larsson's Stockholm is Södermalm and Kungsholmen, the working districts. The documented Fincher locations bear that out: the libel trial was filmed at the Stockholm District Court on Scheelegatan, the Millennium office at an address on Hälsingegatan, Milton Security at Stadsgården below Södermalm, and the financier Wennerström's apartment on Strandvägen in Östermalm. Gamla Stan is the postcard Stockholm the story consciously walks past. It is a five-minute crossing from here to the start of the Millennium walking route on Södermalm.

What is actually there today. Västerlånggatan is the commercial spine and is crowded from late morning onward; Prästgatan, one block east and a few metres higher, is the same length and usually near-empty. Mårten Trotzigs Gränd, connecting the two, narrows to 90 centimetres and is the tightest alley in the city. Köpmangatan and Österlånggatan follow the line of the vanished medieval waterfront, which is why they curve. The cellars beneath many buildings are medieval and now hold restaurants; the facades above are mostly seventeenth and eighteenth century, plastered over older stone. Järntorget, the southern square, was the iron-weighing yard when Swedish bar iron was the country's principal export, and the Tyska kyrkan nearby, the German congregation's church, carries a 96-metre spire that is the tallest thing on the island after the palace.

How to see it well. The island rewards early mornings and evenings. Cruise season and the summer months put dense flows through Västerlånggatan between eleven and five, while the eastern alleys and Riddarholmen stay quiet almost regardless. Riddarholmen's terrace gives the standard view west across Riddarfjärden to the City Hall, best about an hour before sunset. In late November and December a small Christmas market fills Stortorget with stalls under the gabled houses, which is the one moment when the square looks the way most photographs of it suggest.

Getting there. The Gamla Stan metro station sits at the southern end, on the red and green lines, two minutes from T-Centralen. Ferries to Djurgården and the archipelago leave from Slussen and Nybroplan nearby, and the Djurgården line passes close by the island. Walking is the only sensible way to move within it, since most alleys are stepped or too narrow for vehicles. The rest of central Stockholm is within twenty minutes on foot: the City Hall across one bridge, Södermalm across another, and the Vasa Museum a short ferry ride east. The changing of the guard at the Royal Palace draws a crowd to the outer courtyard around midday in summer, which is worth either seeking out or avoiding depending on the plan for the hour.