Musée national de Suède

Climb the main staircase and two vast murals face each other across the hall. On one wall the Swedish painter Carl Larsson shows King Gustav Vasa riding into Stockholm in 1523, at the founding of an independent Sweden. On the wall opposite hangs Midvinterblot, Larsson's dark scene of a legendary Norse king given up in sacrifice to end a famine. He finished it in 1915, the museum rejected it as too grim, and for more than 80 years it hung elsewhere. Only in 1997 did the Nationalmuseum buy it and place it where Larsson had always meant it to go.

The building was raised for the nation's art by the German architect Friedrich August Stüler and opened in 1866, a Renaissance-style palace on the Blasieholmen waterfront facing the royal residence across the water. After years of restoration it reopened in 2018 with its original colours and daylight brought back.

Inside runs the sweep of Swedish art, from Larsson's sunlit family interiors to Anders Zorn's portraits and open-air bathers, hung beside older European masters including Rembrandt. The Nationalmuseum also keeps one of Sweden's great design collections, running from 18th-century silver and Gustavian furniture to modern glass and ceramics.