Sweden - Becky Ohlsen [187]
Gustav’s funerary sword, silver crown and shiny golden buttons are kept in the treasury (18 72 01; adult/child Skr30/free; 10am-5pm Mon-Sat, 12.30-5pm Sun May-Sep, limited hours Oct-Apr) in the cathedral’s north tower, along with a great display of medieval textiles. Particularly fine are the clothes worn by the three noblemen who were murdered in the castle (see opposite): they’re the only example of 16th-century Swedish high fashion still in existence.
BOTANICAL GARDENS
The Botanical Gardens (471 28 38; www.botan.uu.se; Villavägen 6-8; admission free; 7am-9pm May-Sep, 7am-7pm Oct-Apr), below the castle hill, show off more than 10,000 different species and are pleasant to wander through. Attractions include the 200-year-old Linnaeum Orangery (9am-3pm Mon-Fri May-Sep, 9am-2pm Mon-Fri Oct-Apr) and a tropical greenhouse (Skr40).
MUSEUMS
A wondercabinet of wondercabinets, the Museum Gustavianum (471 75 71; www.gustavianum.uu.se; Akademigatan 3; adult/under 12yr Skr40/free; 11am-4pm Tue-Sun) rewards appreciation of the weird and well organised. The shelves in the pleasantly musty building hold case after case of obsolete tools and preserved oddities, like Joseph Cornell shadowboxes gone wrong: stuffed birds, astrolabes, alligator mummies, exotic stones and dried sea creatures. Holding wider appeal is the 17th-century Augsburg Art Cabinet and its thousand ingenious trinkets. Don’t miss Olof Rudbeck’s vertiginous anatomical theatre, where executed criminals were dissected.
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CARL VON LINNÉ
He may sound eccentric – a syphilis doctor who kept monkeys in his back garden – but Carl von Linné (1707–78), better known by his earlier name of Carolus Linnaeus, was a scientific genius. Known as the ‘Father of Taxonomy’, Linné invented a precise method for ranking minerals, plants and animals. Described in his work Systema Naturae, the basis of his system is still used today.
Von Linné believed that by studying the natural world, man could fathom God’s plans. His minute observations led him to devise a classification system of plants (based on their sexual organs) in which one Latin name indicates the genus, and one the species. Some contemporary scientists were appalled at the system’s sexual explicitness, but Von Linné obviously had a sense of humour about it: he named a small and insignificant weed after one of his most vocal critics.
As an inspirational professor at Uppsala University, he packed his pupils off around the globe to bring back samples; two of them even joined Captain Cook’s expedition to Australia. Among his other achievements, Linné took Celsius’ temperature scale and turned it upside down, giving us 0°C for freezing point and 100°C for boiling point, rather than the other way around.
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Rare-book fiends should go directly to Carolina Rediviva (471 39 00; Dag Hammarskjölds väg 1; adult/under 12yr Skr20/free; 9am-5pm Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat, 11am-4pm Sun mid-Jun–mid-Aug; 9am-8pm Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat mid-Aug–mid-Jun), the university library. In a small, dark display room, glass cases hold precious maps and manuscripts, including some illuminated Ethiopian texts and the first book ever printed in Sweden. Occupying its own glowing VIP nook is the surviving half of the Codex Argentus (AD 520), aka the Silver Bible, written in gold and silver ink on purple vellum; aside from being pretty, it’s also linguistically important as the most complete existing document written in the Gothic language.
Upplandsmuseet (16 91 00; www.upplandsmuseet.se, in Swedish; Sankt Eriks Torg 10; admission free; noon-5pm Tue-Sun), in an 18th-century watermill, houses county collections on folk art, music and the history of Uppsala from the Middle Ages onwards, as well as more modern displays. (A recent installation presented photographs from the life of author Astrid Lindgren.) Kids particularly will find the inventive dioramas and reconstructions engrossing.
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