One of the best streets to explore Stockholm, Sweden’s capital city, is by walking along Drottninggatan. Drottninggatan, which means Queen Street in Swedish, is one of the premier pedestrian streets that cuts right through the heart of Stockholm.
Running in mostly a straight line from the northwest to the southeast, Drottninggatan begins at the intersection with Observatoriegatan, where there is the Observatorielunden, a park in Stockholm’s Vasastaden district where the old Stockholm Observatory sits in the center atop a hill. From there, it is a regular street for a few blocks, open to cars as well as pedestrian traffic. However, the magic begins as you head southeast starting around its intersection with Tegnérgatan; from here and all the way to its southern terminus, it is a pedestrian street (cross-streets intersect with vehicular traffic at several intersections). Drottninggatan continues for another kilometer and a half in a southeasterly direction where it ends at the edge of the island in the Norrmalm district at Norrström. Actually, the beauty of it is that it doesn’t really end, but rather flows into the bridge that leads eventually to Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s tourist-favorite Old Town.
Drottninggatan can trace its beginnings back almost 400 years, to the 1600’s when it was planned as a tribute to the young Queen Kristina; work on it began in 1637, and by 1641 the first segment was completed. Two centuries later, it became a posh street for some of Stockholm’s wealthier elite to shop and stroll; numerous theaters and even Sweden’s first upper-class hotels sprung up here around this time.
