Explore Uppsala

Uppsala Castle is a royal castle begun under Gustav Vasa in 1549 on a ridge above the city, rebuilt in stages after the fire of 1702. The pink wings hold the residence of the governor of Uppsala County and Uppsala Art Museum, with modern and contemporary art on three floors; the gun battery on the bastion still faces the cathedral.

Uppsala Botanical Garden belongs to Uppsala University and lies directly west of Uppsala Castle, on land King Gustav III gave the university in 1787. It has a formal baroque garden, the Linneanum orangery with Mediterranean trees in winter, a tropical greenhouse with a giant water lily, a Scandinavian mountain section and a kitchen garden.

Carolina Rediviva is the main building of Uppsala University Library, built in 1820–1841 to designs by Carl Fredrik Sundvall at the top of Drottninggatan. Its exhibition hall by the entrance shows the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century Gothic gospel book written in silver ink, the Carta marina map of 1539 and changing displays from the library's collections.

Uppsala Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Uppsala, a Gothic brick church begun in the 1270s and consecrated in 1435; it is 118.7 metres long and as tall. Its chapels hold the tombs of Gustav Vasa and John III, Carl Linnaeus and Emanuel Swedenborg are buried here, and the Skattkammaren treasury shows medieval textiles and royal regalia.

Gamla Uppsala, north of central Uppsala, was a royal and religious centre of the Svear in the Iron Age. Three large burial mounds from around the 6th century rise beside a wider grave field, and the medieval stone church next to them stands where the first cathedral of Uppsala stood until the archbishop's seat moved south in 1273.