Storkyrkan

On 20 April 1535, people in Stockholm saw rings of light and false suns over the city. Olaus Petri, the Lutheran reformer and Stockholm preacher, read the display as a warning from God, had it painted and hung the picture here. King Gustav Vasa saw no omen in it, since the false suns faded and the true sun remained.

That original is lost. What hangs in Storkyrkan today is a copy made in 1636 by the court painter Jacob Heinrich Elbfas. It was long taken for the original, until a restoration in 1998 and 1999 dated its panel to the 17th century and uncovered a grey-blue sky under later repainting. Below the halos lies the medieval town on its islands, with the old royal castle, Tre Kronor, which burned in 1697, and this church itself. It is often called the oldest colour view of Stockholm.

Storkyrkan is above all a working church, the oldest in Gamla Stan, the old town, and the city's cathedral since 1942, with a brick Gothic interior behind an 18th-century façade. Its other famous piece is the carved group of St George and the Dragon, finished around 1489 and usually attributed to Bernt Notke, a sculptor from Lübeck. Sten Sture, then regent of Sweden, commissioned it to mark his victory over the Danes at Brunkeberg in 1471, and real elk antler was worked into the dragon.