Riddarholmen

City Hall is located on Lake Malaren in Stockholm. It was built in the early 20th century. It’s built in the National Romantic style which means that it was inspired by the past. It looks medieval but was finished in 1923. It took 12 years to build using 8 million red bricks that were specially made using medieval techniques.
The architect was such a control freak that he lived on sight for the duration of the build. If something didn’t look right he would have a whole section torn down and moved a foot forward or back. You get the idea.
The building was spectacular on the inside. The first room you enter is the Blue Hall, which isn’t blue. It was supposed to not have a roof, so you could see the blue sky. That didn’t fly, so they placed a ship’s sail (canvas) as the roof. Since the walls were all red brick, it was thought that it should be called the Red Hall. The only problem is that the Communist Revolution had just occurred in Russia. So they didn’t want the name of the hall to be associated with Communists. So it’s still the Blue Hall.

The real highlight though is the Golden Hall. The walls are covered 24.5 carat gold mosaic. There are at least 19000 of these gold tiles. It’s quite spectacular! The interesting part is that the architect chose a young, unknown 26 year old to design and carry out the mosaic installation. This young man wanted a good long time for he and his team to install his very complicated designs. The architect said no, it has to be done by a certain date in 1923 because that will be the 400 year old anniversary when Gustov Vasa made Sweden a Lutheran country. So it was a rushed job. There were spelling mistakes, Gustav Vasa’s head and some angels’ heads were cut off (ran out of room where the wall met the ceiling) and the Queen of the Lake ( Stockholm) looked like a goggle-eyed, lopsided Medusa. Soooooo people were not impressed when it was first unveiled. Today, people think it’s quite lovely. It was a bit of an overcast day, so perhaps it wasn’t as glorious as it would be with the sun streaming through the windows.
In the Blue Hall, Nobel Prize Winners have their gala celebratory dinner in December of every year. Each Nobel Winner is escorted into the the dinner by a member of the Royal Family. The dinner is for 1300 people including family members, university professors, etc.

After dinner, a formal ball is held in the Golden Hall. After a few hours it turns into a disco and the Nobel Winners let down their hair and boogie down.

Finally we viewed where the elected members of city council sit and vote on important municipal issues. The ceiling is designed to look like a Viking long house with the a wide open area at the top that is painted blue to mimic the sky.

Oh by the way. This is the morning that I left my camera battery in my backpack on the bus. So...... phone pics.Read more