Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The following decades weren't so kind to the capital. A devastating famine brought
starving hordes to the city in 1696, and the beloved Tre Kronor went up in flames the fol-
lowing year. Russian military victories shrunk the Swedish empire, and a plague engulfed
the city in 1711.
A now-fragile Stockholm traded state-building for character-building. Botanist Carl von
Linné (1707-78) developed the template for the classification of plants and animals,
Anders Celsius (1701-44) came up with the centigrade temperature scale, and royal palace
Kungliga Slottet rose from the ashes of Tre Kroner. Swedish science, architecture and arts
blossomed during the reign of Francophile King Gustav III (1771-92), but the theatre
buff's tyrannical tendencies saw him assassinated by parliament member Jacob Johan
Anckarström at a masked ball in the Opera House in 1792. The murder formed the basis of
Giuseppe Verdi's opera
A Masked Ball
.
When Sweden's northern and southern train lines were connected via Stockholm's Cent-
ralstationen and Riddarholmen in 1871, an industrial boom kicked in. The city's popula-
tion reached 245,000 in 1890 (an increase of 77,000 in 10 years), and new districts like
Östermalm expanded the city limits.
Stockholm hosted the 1912 summer Olympics, but the resulting elation quickly dissip-
ated when Sweden refused to uphold a blockade against Germany during WWI. Britain at-
tacked the country's supply lines, causing starving Stockholmers to riot in Gustav Adolfs
Torg. During WWII Sweden's official neutrality made it a hot spot for Jewish, Scandinavi-
an and Baltic refugees, the first of many successive waves of migrants.
The city's postwar economic boom saw the advent of Eastern Bloc-style suburban ex-
pansion. Along with growth and modernisation came increased violence, notably the still-
unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme on Sveavägen in 1986, and the stabbing
death of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh at the NK department store in 2003.
These days, the capital is part of a major European biotechnology region, as well as a
rising star in food and fashion.
