The mature trees
Limes and oaks among the city's oldest.
Øyvind Holmstad — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Arild Vagen — CC BY-SA 3.0 · acediscovery — CC BY 4.0
Humlegarden is a large public park in the affluent Ostermalm district, begun in the sixteenth century as a field for growing hops for the royal brewery — hence its name, the hop garden. It became a pleasure garden in the eighteenth century and opened to the public in 1869. Its distinction is its mature trees: rows of lime and huge oaks shading the walks, among the oldest in the city. At its centre stands a statue of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised the system for naming living things still used worldwide — a logical placement, given the site began as a cultivated field. The Swedish National Library occupies a nineteenth-century building on its northern edge. The park is not a tourist sight but a residents' space: families, playgrounds, a summer cafe and lawns for sitting, and it is the best rest stop if you are shopping the surrounding Ostermalm streets.
Limes and oaks among the city's oldest.
The Swedish taxonomist at the park's centre.
Humlegarden, 114 46 Stockholm
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