Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
northwest of Stockholm. Apart from boasting Sweden's oldest street, Sigtuna has the
ruins of three eleventh-century churches - one of which, St Peter's, features the
country's oldest groin vault.
Round arches, a distinctive feature of Romanesque architecture, flourished wherever
limestone and sandstone were found - principally in regions of southern and central
Sweden, such as Västergötland, Östergötland and Närke, as well as Skåne. An easy
supply of both types of stone was to be found on the Baltic island of Gotland, from
where numerous baptismal fonts and richly carved sandstone decorations were
exported to the mainland both to the west (Sweden proper) and the east (Swedish-
controlled Finland).
Of the great monastic ruins from this period, the finest is the
Alvastra monastery
(1143), just south of Vadstena near the eastern shores of Lake Vättern. A portion of the
huge barrel-vaults can still be seen, though much of the graceful structure was carted
off by Vasa to build his castle at Vadstena.
Gothic
architecture emerged in the thirteenth century, one of the finest early examples
being the
Maria church
in Sigtuna (1237), which with its red-brick step gables is
markedly unlike the austere grey-stone churches of a century earlier. The cathedral at
Strängnäs
, due east of Stockholm, is another superb piece of Gothic brick architecture,
while in Malmö, the German-inspired
St Peter's church
survives as a fine example of
brick Gothic, a style often known as the Hanseatic Style. The cathedral at Uppsala (the
largest in Scandinavia) is another intriguing specimen, designed to a French High
Gothic plan by Parisian builders as a limestone structure, but eventually built in brick
in a simpler,
Baltic Gothic
form. A good example of late Gothic is
Vadstena convent
church
; begun in 1384, this austere limestone and brick hall was built exactly as
decreed by St Birgitta, the founder of the church.
Few examples of the castles and fortifications of this period exist today. One of the
best examples,
Varberg's fortress
in Halland, just south of Gothenburg, was built by
the Danes, while the best Swedish-built medieval fortifications are in Finland, a
Swedish province until the early nineteenth century. One stark and beautifully
unmolested example of a fortification in Danish-controlled Skåne is the castle of
Glimmingehus; dating from around 1500, it was built by Adam van Duren, who also
supervised the completion of the cathedral of Lund.
Renaissance and Baroque architecture
Gustav Vasa
(ruled 1523-60) could not have had a more pronounced effect on Swedish
architecture. In 1527, with his reformation of the Church, Catholic properties were
confiscated, and in many instances the fabric of monasteries and churches was used to
build and convert castles into resplendent palaces. Wonderful examples of such
Renaissance palaces are
Kalmar castle
, in the south of Småland, and
Vadstena's castle
- though, unlike Kalmar, the latter's interior has been stripped of its original
furnishings. Another magnificent Vasa palace, a glorious ruin since a nineteenth-
century fire, is
Borgholm castle
on the Baltic island of Öland.
While few churches built in this period enjoyed much prominence, one of outstanding
elegance is the
Trefaldighetskyrkan
(Trinity church) in Kristianstad, Danish king
Christian IV's model Renaissance city in Skåne. With its tall windows, slender granite
pillars and square bays, it is the epitome of sophistication and simplicity.
GOTLAND GOTHIC
The most rewarding place to explore Sweden's Gothic architecture is
Gotland
- the
countryside is peppered with almost one hundred richly sculpted medieval churches, while
the island's capital, the magnificently preserved Hanseatic seat of
Visby
, is replete with
excellent domestic as well as ecclesiastical Gothic.
