Saint George
Life-size wood with real elk antlers.
ArildV โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท W. Bulach โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท ArildV โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท ArildV โ CC BY-SA 4.0
The church predates the Royal Palace by centuries, and when the palace was rebuilt after the 1697 fire in severe baroque, the Gothic cathedral beside it looked visually discordant โ so its exterior was clad in the eighteenth century in a baroque shell matching its neighbour, while the medieval interior was left untouched.
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Storkyrkan is the oldest church in central Stockholm, its origins reaching back to the thirteenth century โ to the founding of the city itself โ and it serves as the cathedral of Stockholm diocese and the place where Swedish monarchs are crowned and married, most recently Crown Princess Victoria in 2010. Its exterior facade is baroque, added later to harmonise with the adjacent Royal Palace, but inside it is plainly brick Gothic with bare red columns and high vaults. Its artistic treasure is the Saint George and the Dragon sculpture (1489) by the German carver Bernt Notke: a huge life-size wooden group, made partly from real elk antlers, counted among the most important late-medieval sculptures in all northern Europe. It was dedicated to mark a Swedish victory over Denmark, so the religious work is a political monument too. A second striking piece is the Vadersolstavlan โ the oldest known depiction of Stockholm, showing the city in 1535 beneath a strange solar phenomenon read at the time as an omen. The church is relatively small and a visit runs under half an hour, but it sits squarely in the heart of Gamla Stan.
Life-size wood with real elk antlers.
The oldest known image of Stockholm.
Trangsund 1, 111 29 Stockholm