Sweden

The Swedish capital is built across fourteen islands at the meeting point of Lake Mälaren and the Baltic. Gamla Stan, the medieval old town, holds the Royal Palace, Storkyrkan and the narrow lanes around Stortorget; Djurgården clusters the Vasa Museum (the seventeenth-century warship recovered intact in 1961), the ABBA Museum, Skansen open-air museum and the Nordic Museum within a single day's walking circuit; Södermalm holds the city's restaurant scene, design boutiques, the SoFo neighbourhood and the panoramic walk along the Monteliusvägen ridge. The Stockholm archipelago of around 30 000 islands extends east into the Baltic — SL Waxholmsbolaget ferries from Strömkajen reach Vaxholm, Grinda, Sandhamn and Utö in under three hours.

Sweden's second city sits at the mouth of the Göta älv on the Skagerrak. The Dutch-engineered seventeenth-century canal network defines the central districts; the Liseberg amusement park, the Universeum science centre and the Feskekôrka fish market round out the city itself; Haga is the cobbled coffee-and-cinnamon-bun district. Out of the city, the Bohuslän coast runs north toward Norway with Marstrand, Smögen, Fjällbacka and Strömstad on a chain of granite islands and red fishing-cabin harbours; the West Sweden archipelago ferries leave Gothenburg's Saltholmen for Brännö, Styrsö and Vrångö all year.

The northernmost quarter of Sweden, historically Sápmi, is the country's most distinctive landscape. The Northern Lights season runs from roughly mid-September to late March, with Abisko National Park (often advertised as one of the world's best aurora viewing locations, thanks to its cold-desert climate and the Sky Station chairlift up Mount Nuolja) at its centre. The Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi — rebuilt every winter and offering a year-round Icehotel 365 wing — is the headline accommodation. The Kiruna mining town, the Sarek and Stora Sjöfallet national parks, the Kungsleden long-distance trail and Sami reindeer-husbandry experiences with operators in Jokkmokk and Karesuando are the deeper-country circuit; in summer the same region delivers the midnight sun, salmon-run rivers and long high-arctic light.

Skåne, the southernmost province, is castle country with Glimmingehus, Trolleholm, Sofiero and Skarhult inside an hour of Malmö, plus the Kullaberg peninsula north of Helsingborg, the Österlen orchards and vineyards, and the Stenshuvud and Söderåsen national parks. Malmö itself is a redeveloped harbour city with the Turning Torso skyscraper, the Western Harbour district, the Lilla Torg restaurant cluster and the rebuilt Malmö Castle. The Öresund Bridge (the Drogden Tunnel + bridge link from the 2000 opening) makes Malmö a 35-minute train ride from Copenhagen Kastrup airport, an unusually convenient way for visitors to combine Sweden and Denmark in one trip.

Central Sweden is the cultural heartland. Dalarna holds the painted wooden Dala horses (the souvenir is real — Nusnäs is the village of origin), the Carl Larsson home at Sundborn, the Falu copper-mine UNESCO World Heritage site, Lake Siljan and the long midsummer-pole tradition that defines the country's June solstice celebrations. Värmland to the west is Selma Lagerlöf country (Mårbacka homestead), and the Götakanal — the 190-km canal-and-lake route built between 1810 and 1832 — runs across the country between Gothenburg and Stockholm, navigable as multi-day cruise itineraries on the M/S Diana, M/S Wilhelm Tham and M/S Juno from May to September.

The Right of Public Access — Allemansrätten — gives every traveller freedom to walk, cycle, ski, swim and pitch a tent on uncultivated land in Sweden at a sensible distance from inhabited buildings, with the obligation not to damage and not to disturb. The Kungsleden 425-km Arctic-mountain trail, the Sörmlandsleden out of Stockholm, the Bohusleden along the west coast, and the Skåneleden in the south are the named long-distance routes. Cabin-based travel — STF Vandrarhem hostels, traditional red Falu-painted summer-houses for rent on Hemester, Stuga.com and the equivalent — is part of how Swedes themselves travel in their own country, and visitors who pick up the rhythm rate it as one of the best parts of any longer Sweden trip.

Sweden's UNESCO list and royal sites give the country a strong cultural-heritage spine: the Drottningholm Palace and Theatre on Lake Mälaren outside Stockholm (the royal family's actual residence and a working seventeenth-century court theatre), the Birka and Hovgården Viking-age trading settlements on Björkö, the Skogskyrkogården woodland cemetery designed by Asplund and Lewerentz, the Engelsberg ironworks, the Rock Carvings in Tanum, the High Coast and the Hanseatic town of Visby on Gotland. Gotland itself is a separate full week — medieval ramraktsmurar walls, sheep-grazed limestone landscape and the long Almedalen political-summit week in early July.