5 Days in Gothenburg

Start in the main square, Gustaf Adolfs torg, where the bronze founder points to the spot where he decided to build his city. Around it stand the old Stock Exchange and the City Hall. Walk two minutes to Kronhuset, a red-brick arsenal from the 1650s and the oldest secular building in the city, where the Swedish parliament met in 1660 when the young King Charles XI was proclaimed here. The little craft shops around its courtyard, Kronhusbodarna, sell glass, sweets and pottery.

Then go into the Gothenburg City Museum, housed in the 1750s headquarters of the Swedish East India Company. Between 1731 and 1813 its ships sailed to Canton and came back loaded with tea, silk and porcelain, and the profits paid for the stone merchant houses along the canals. The museum has Chinese porcelain, the story of the city from the Vikings to the shipyards, and Sweden's only preserved Viking ship.

From Kungsportsplatsen, the flat-bottomed Paddan boats ("toads") have taken visitors around the canals and harbor since the 1930s. The route follows the Vallgraven, the old moat, and the canals the Dutch engineers dug, under bridges so low that everyone on board has to duck, then out into the harbor past the Opera and the shipyards. It's the quickest way to understand how the city was built.

Walk along the canal to Feskekôrka, the "fish church", a fish market hall from 1874 with tall Gothic windows and a steep roof that made locals think of a church. It was never one: Feskekôrka is simply Gothenburg dialect for "the fish church". It reopened in 2024 after a long renovation with fewer stalls than before: two fish counters, a smokehouse stall and a few small restaurants and bars.

Order a räksmörgås, the west coast shrimp sandwich: a slice of bread piled high with hand-peeled shrimp, egg, mayonnaise and dill. In autumn and winter, ask for oysters too: the west coast has some of Europe's best.

Cross the canal into Haga, the old workers' district outside the city walls. Its main street, Haga Nygata, is lined with landshövdingehus, a Gothenburg invention: three-story houses with a stone ground floor and two wooden floors above, a clever way around a law that banned wooden buildings more than two floors high. Today the street is all cafés, vintage shops and small boutiques, and busy with visitors. Locals call it a bit overrated, but you have to see it once.

The reason to come is the Hagabulle, a cinnamon bun the size of a dinner plate, at Café Husaren. Share one with a coffee: it's fika, the Swedish coffee break, at its most excessive. Every 4 October, Sweden celebrates Cinnamon Bun Day.

From the end of Haga Nygata, climb the steps to Skansen Kronan, a round tower from the 1690s with a golden crown on top, built on a rocky hill to defend the city from the Danes. It never had to fire a shot in anger. From the top of the hill you get a wide, free view over the rooftops, the harbor and the cranes, and it's one of the best places in town at sunset.

For dinner, walk to Kometen, a dark-wood restaurant on Vasagatan serving Swedish home cooking, husmanskost, since 1934. It's the place for köttbullar, Swedish meatballs, with cream sauce, mashed potatoes, lingonberries and pickled cucumber, and other classics like biff Rydberg and fried herring. Little has changed in decades, which is the point.

Just across the canal from the Central Station is Trädgårdsföreningen, a park laid out in 1842, with a rose garden of thousands of roses in summer. Its centerpiece is the Palm House from 1878, a white glass-and-iron greenhouse inspired by the Crystal Palace in London, full of tropical plants and warm, damp air, a good place to dry out on a rainy day.

Walk up Kungsportsavenyn, Avenyn to locals, the boulevard laid out in the 1860s and 70s, lined with bars, terraces and shops. It ends at Götaplatsen, a square built for the city's great jubilee exhibition of 1923, two years after the 300th anniversary, with the art museum, the concert hall, the city theater and the library around it. In the middle stands Carl Milles's Poseidon, a seven-meter bronze sea god holding a fish. Gothenburgers love to tell visitors that Milles was made to shrink the god's manhood after complaints, and took his revenge by shaping the fish so that, seen from the concert hall steps, it looks like something else entirely. It's probably more legend than fact, but go and look.

The Gothenburg Museum of Art at the top of the square has one of the best collections of Nordic art anywhere: Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, the Skagen painters, Edvard Munch, and French Impressionists and old masters. Inside the same building, the Hasselblad Center shows photography exhibitions, named after the Gothenburg camera maker whose cameras went to the Moon.

A 15-20 minute walk east is World of Volvo, opened in 2024, an experience center about Volvo cars, trucks and buses in a striking wooden building. The real story is local: Volvo was started in 1927 by the Gothenburg ball-bearing company SKF, which is why its name is Latin for "I roll", and the first car, the ÖV4, rolled out of a factory on Hisingen that April. Volvo Cars has been owned by the Chinese company Geely since 2010, while trucks and buses are a separate Swedish company.

Next door, Universeum, a science center with a rainforest under glass, is the best rainy-day choice with children.

For dinner, walk back to the center for the seafood that defines the city. Fiskekrogen, on Lilla Torget since 1972, is a classic for lobster, shellfish platters and fish. Start with toast Skagen, shrimp in mayonnaise and dill on fried bread with roe. It was actually invented in Stockholm in 1958, but it's never better than with west coast shrimp.

Finish at Ölhallen 7:an on Kungstorget, a beer hall from 1900 with dark wood, no music and the same regulars for decades. Order a Carnegie Porter, brewed in Gothenburg since 1836, named after the Scottish merchant David Carnegie.

Start with a walk along the quay at Lilla Bommen, past the four-masted barque Viking from 1906, Barken Viking to locals, the Opera and the red and white skyscraper the locals call Läppstiftet, the Lipstick, then cross the Hisingsbron bridge to Frihamnen, an old port area. Here the city has built Jubileumsparken, a park for its 400th anniversary, with a public sauna of rusted steel and timber that locals have nicknamed Svettekôrka, "the sweat church", after the fish church. It's free, but slots are booked online and go fast, and opening days vary, so check ahead. Bring swimwear and a towel. Between sessions you climb down into the river, and in summer there are floating pools in the harbor.

Walk west along the north bank, about half an hour, to Karlatornet, the tallest building in the Nordic countries, at about 245 meters, finished on the old shipyard land of Karlastaden. In June 2026 it opened an observation deck, Gothenburg View, at about 220 meters, and the view takes in the whole city, the river winding to the sea and the islands of the archipelago. For a free view instead, locals climb Ramberget, the rocky hill in Keillers park just behind.

From Lindholmspiren, take the Älvsnabben ferry, line 285, downriver to Eriksberg and Klippan, the cheapest harbor cruise in town. In the 1960s Gothenburg's shipyards, Götaverken, Eriksberg and Lindholmen, were among the biggest in the world. They all closed in the shipbuilding crisis of the 1970s and 80s, and the giant Eriksberg crane, left standing on the north bank, is their monument.

From Klippan, walk or take the tram a few stops east to Stigbergstorget for the Maritime Museum and Aquarium, Sjöfartsmuseet Akvariet, which reopened after a rebuild and was named Sweden's museum of the year in 2024. It tells the story of Gothenburg's ships, sailors and emigrants, many of whom left from here for America in the 1800s, and has a big new aquarium with sea life from around the world and one of Europe's largest collections of living corals.

Stigberget, the hill around it, is the start of Majorna, the old district of sailors and dockworkers, now a neighborhood of cafés, record shops and second-hand stores. Walk up to Masthuggskyrkan, a church from 1914 that looks over the harbor, with a ceiling like the hull of a ship. The view from its terrace at sunset is the locals' favorite.

Walk down to Järntorget and the Långgatorna, four parallel streets, Första to Fjärde Långgatan, that were once dockside streets of sailors' bars and are now Gothenburg's best area for an evening out: pubs, wine bars, cheap restaurants and music venues like Pustervik. Gothenburg calls itself Sweden's beer capital, with dozens of breweries in and around the city. Look for local names like Stigbergets, Poppels and Dugges on the taps.

At Saltholmen, the ferries leave for the islands from a little harbor with a classic cold-bath house, Saltholmens kallbadhus. Take the boat to Vrångö, the southernmost island, 35-60 minutes depending on the boat, stopping at Köpstadsö, Styrsö and Donsö on the way, with fishing villages of white and red wooden houses on bare pink granite.

Vrångö is the most open and wild of the islands, half of it a nature reserve of heather, juniper and smooth rocks sloping into the sea. Walk the path around the southern part of the island, about an hour and a half, and find a rock to sit on and look out to the Kattegat. In summer, the sandy beach and the rocks are perfect for swimming in water that reaches about 18-20°C in July and August.

On the way back, stop at Styrsö, the biggest of the islands, with several harbors and a few restaurants and cafés open in season. Order fish soup or a shrimp sandwich and sit by the water. Brännö, the next island, is famous for its summer dances on the jetty on Thursday nights in July, and its old inn serves lunch in summer.

On the tram back into town, stop at Klippan for dinner at Sjömagasinet, a seafood restaurant in an East India Company warehouse from the 1770s on the river. The west coast is famous for its shellfish: the lobster season opens in late September, and autumn and winter are the best months for lobster, langoustines and oysters.

Stora Saluhallen on Kungstorget is a cast-iron market hall from 1889 with dozens of food stalls: fish, cheese, game, coffee, bakeries and lunch counters. It's the place for a Swedish breakfast or an early lunch: a cinnamon bun, cured gravlax on dark bread, or a bowl of fish soup. Next door, Ölhallen 7:an is the city's last traditional beer hall.

Slottsskogen is a big landscape park from 1874, with lakes, hills and a small free zoo of Nordic animals, seals, penguins, moose and deer. In August it hosts the Way Out West music festival. On the hill is the Natural History Museum, the city's oldest, whose star exhibit is a stuffed blue whale, caught in 1865, the only one in the world. On a few special days a year you can even step inside it.

Across the road is the Gothenburg Botanical Garden, one of the largest in Europe, with about 20,000 plants from 130 countries in a rock garden, an arboretum and greenhouses. The rock garden, with a waterfall and plants from mountains all over the world, is the highlight. Behind it, the trails of Änggårdsbergen climb into a heathland nature reserve with views over the city.

Walk back along Linnégatan, a wide boulevard of restaurants, cafés and shops, or take the tram west to Mariaplan in Majorna and Kungsladugård. These are the best streets to see the landshövdingehus where generations of dockworkers lived, now some of the most sought-after homes in the city. It's the Gothenburg of the singer Håkan Hellström, who sings about these streets. Here, too, every second street corner has a hot dog kiosk: order a halv special, half a hot dog in a bun buried under mashed potato, a Gothenburg invention.

End the trip at Liseberg, Scandinavia's largest amusement park, opened in 1923 for the jubilee exhibition and part of every Gothenburg childhood. Its wooden roller coaster Balder and the steel coaster Helix regularly top European rankings. In summer it's a pleasure garden of rides and concerts, in October it turns into a Halloween park, and from mid-November to the end of December Jul på Liseberg fills it with five million lights, a Christmas market, skating and a julbord, the Swedish Christmas buffet.