Where to go in Gothenburg
Start in Haga, the oldest quarter — a grid of cobbled lanes and timber-and-stone houses, now full of cafés, design shops and antique stores, and home to Café Husaren and its absurdly large Hagabullen cinnamon bun. From there the city is walkable: the long boulevard of Avenyn for its bars and the Gothenburg Museum of Art at its head; the design-led shops of Magasinsgatan; and, down by the water, the Feskekörka, the "Fish Church" — a market hall built in 1874 in the shape of a Gothic church and packed with the day's catch. For families and the young at heart, Liseberg, open since 1923, is the great amusement park of Scandinavia, a city institution as much for its gardens and concerts as its rides, and host to a magical Christmas market in December.
But Gothenburg's defining feature is the sea at its edge. The southern archipelago — a chain of car-free granite islands like Styrsö and Vrångö — is reachable by tram and public ferry from Saltholmen on the same ticket as the city trams, making a half-day of swimming, walking and seafood lunches astonishingly easy; the island town of Marstrand, with its seventeenth-century fortress, lies up the coast. For the in-between hours there are the riverside Maritime Museum and the science centre Universeum, the green calm of the Botanical Garden, and the simple pleasure of riding the blue trams to get the measure of the place. The Western Harbour, the old shipyard district across the river, shows the modern, regenerated side of the city.
