Tourist in Uppsala – a city to experience on foot 🌿

Uppsala is not a city you "tick off".
It is a city you read.

Here, history lies not only in the monuments, but in the spaces in between – in the alleys, the parks, the students' steps over the cobblestones, and in the thoughts that were once thought here and still influence how we see the world.

Being a tourist in Uppsala is therefore less about rushing between sights and more about letting the city unfold.
The best way? To walk.

The walk begins where Uppsala literally rises: at Uppsala Castle.
From here you see not only the city – you see the power, the ambitions and the conflicts that built Sweden.

The castle is associated with Gustav Vasa and the drama surrounding the Reformation, but also with a larger story: how ideas about state, faith and knowledge shaped the country. To start here is to start with an overview – both geographically and historically.

Then we move downwards. Not only in the terrain, but in perspective.
From national politics to everyday life.

In the English Park we meet another Uppsala.
The green, vibrant, slightly more thoughtful one.

Here, students pass by every day on their way to lectures that continue a centuries-long tradition of learning. At the same time, Pelle Svanslös stands here – perhaps the most unexpected cultural personality in the city.

And that is so typical of Uppsala.

Here coexist:

• science and imagination

• academic weight and children's book warm humor

• solemnity and everyday life

It is a city that is never just one thing.

The streets that tell the understated Uppsala

Along Övre Slottsgatan the rhythm changes.
The wooden houses, the smaller facades and the human scale show an Uppsala beyond ceremonies and doctoral promotions.

Here you sense craftsmen, family life, small scale – all that makes history feel lived, not staged.

Being a tourist in Uppsala is to discover just this:
that the big ideas have always had an everyday life as a foundation. Join me next time, April 25.