Explore Gothenburg

The Museum of Gothenburg occupies the East India House on Norra Hamngatan, built in the mid-18th century as the offices and warehouses of the Swedish East India Company. Founded in 1861, it covers the history of Gothenburg and West Sweden from the Stone Age to today, and displays the Äskekärr ship, the only original Viking ship shown in Sweden.

Maritiman is a museum of historic ships moored at Packhuskajen on the Göta älv in central Gothenburg, opened in 1987 by a foundation set up to save vessels from scrapping. Visitors go aboard the destroyer HSwMS Småland, the submarine Nordkaparen, the monitor Sölve, tugboats and a fire boat, and walk through engine rooms, cabins and bridges.

The Röhsska Museum is Sweden's museum of design, fashion and applied arts, founded in 1904 with bequests from the Röhss brothers and opened in 1916 on Vasagatan. Its red-brick National Romantic building by Carl Westman holds over 50,000 objects, from Swedish and European furniture, glass and ceramics to Chinese and Japanese crafts and 20th-century fashion.

The Gothenburg Museum of Art closes Götaplatsen at the top of Kungsportsavenyen, in a yellow-brick building by Sigfrid Ericson opened in 1925. Its collection of over 70,000 works centres on Nordic art from the 15th century on, with the Fürstenberg Gallery showing Krøyer, Larsson, Munch and Zorn. The building also houses the Hasselblad Center for photography.

Universeum is a science centre with a zoo and public aquarium on Södra Vägen in Gothenburg, opened in 2001. Its glass and timber building holds a rainforest hall with free-flying birds and monkeys, an ocean tank of 1.4 million litres with sharks and rays, Nordic wildlife, reptiles, and hands-on exhibitions on space, chemistry and the human body.