Stockholm’s Drottninggatan (Queen’s Street) is an old street which leads directly through the Riksdagshus (Parliament building) and over the bridge from the Royal Palace. It’s one of Stockholm’s main pedestrian ways. Don’t miss Queen’s Street in Stockholm when visiting the capital of Sweden.
In summer, it is full of casual crowds strolling or sitting at one of the outdoor cafés. At the northern end is the excellent Strindberg Museum, housed in the top-floor flat of the Blue Tower (Blåtornet) where Sweden’s greatest playwright spent his last years and wrote his last epic play, The Great Highway in 1908.
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Even at the end of his life, Strindberg was astonishingly prolific; he produced some 20 books in his four years in the Blue Tower.
Walking south along Drottningsgatan to Kungsgatan, on your left you’ll come to Hötorget, with its open-air food stalls and indoor market. This is where Swedes shop for food. Here you can find Swedish delicacies such as elk steak and reindeer and the many varieties of Scandinavian cured herring.
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Drottninggatan’s history
The street was laid out in the 1630s and 1640s when the surrounding area was built on a rectilinear grid plan, a significant innovation in Stockholm’s urban environment. It was originally named Stora Konungsgatan (“Great King’s Street”) and was later renamed as Drottninggatan in honour of Queen Christina, who ruled from 1632 to 1654. Its name was paired with that of nearby Regeringsgatan(“Government Street”).
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This style of naming was relatively novel for Scandinavia, which did not have a tradition of streets named for the king or queen. It was most likely borrowed from Amsterdam or Copenhagen, where groups of streets were given names from the same semantic categories. Thus in Copenhagen’s district of Christianshavn, laid out in 1618, three streets were named Kongens gade (“King’s Street”), Dronninggaden (“Queen’s Street”) and Prinsensgade (“Prince’s Street”). Source: Wikipedia
Queen’s Street in Stockholm, written by Tor Kjolberg