Uppsala

The town at first was called Aros, "river mouth", for its place where the Fyris river once met a bay of Lake Mälaren, while the older Uppsala, a few kilometres north, was the royal and pagan cult centre of the Svear, marked by great burial mounds. In 1164 Uppsala became the seat of Sweden's archbishop. When the cathedral at Gamla Uppsala burned, the archbishopric and the relics of Saint Eric moved south to Östra Aros, which took over as the main regional centre in 1274, building the present Gothic cathedral.

The university, founded in 1477, is the oldest in Scandinavia. Gustav Vasa began a castle on the ridge above the town in the 16th century, and coronations were held in the cathedral for many of Sweden's kings and queens until 1719. In 1702 a great fire destroyed much of the town and damaged the university's botanical garden.

The 18th century was the age of Uppsala's scientists: Anders Celsius, whose temperature scale bears his name, and Carl Linnaeus, who taught at the university, revived its garden and built the system for naming plants and animals that biology still uses. In the 19th century a new library, the University Hall and the railway were built, and in the 20th century the city grew with its university and research into Sweden's fourth-largest city.

Uppsala's identity is bound up with its university. Students belong to one of thirteen nations, each traditionally representing a region of Sweden, which serve meals and run pubs, clubs and formal dinners, mostly from buildings in the historic quarter west of the river. The student caps, songs and speeches of Valborg on 30 April are the city's great public celebration.

The Church of Sweden's archbishop has his seat in the city, and the cathedral holds the remains of Saint Eric, patron saint of the nation, and the tombs of Gustav Vasa and Linnaeus. The city also takes pride in its deeper past at Gamla Uppsala, where the royal mounds stand among the fields.

Music runs from church and choir concerts to the Uppsala Reggae Festival, the largest in Scandinavia. The Disting market in early February, held since prehistoric times, and Kulturnatten in autumn, the largest culture night in Sweden, bring much of the city out. Manners are those of a quiet, educated university town, with a large international community of researchers and students.

The urban area had about 175,000 inhabitants in 2023, and the whole municipality about 249,000 in 2026. The university draws students and researchers from the rest of Sweden and from abroad.

The university and the University Hospital are central to the city, and companies such as offshoots of the pharmaceutical firm Pharmacia make Uppsala a research city. With trains taking about 40 minutes to the capital, many residents commute to Stockholm, and the train to Arlanda takes 17 minutes.

Bicycles are everywhere, and the term calendar sets the city's rhythm: busy and young from late August to early June, quieter in July. The Fyris river divides the city in two: the modern administrative, residential and commercial centre lies to the east of it, and the historic quarter to the west. The west bank holds the old university quarter and most of the student nations, while the east bank has the shops and the station, with residential districts spreading outward across the fertile Uppsala flatlands.

Uppsala eats much as the rest of central Sweden does: the weekday dagens rätt lunch, köttbullar, meatballs with brown cream sauce and lingonberry jam, and herring dishes at Midsummer and Christmas. The student nations shape eating out, with pubs and cafés that serve simple meals, and formal dinners called gasques, where the student cap and uniform can still be seen. Fried Baltic herring, stekt strömming, is another Swedish classic.

Fika is a habit across the city, and cafés serve kanelbullar, cinnamon buns, and around Lent the semla, a cardamom-spiced bun filled with milk and almond paste and topped with whipped cream. Saluhallen, the market hall near the cathedral, sells seafood, cheese and other quality ingredients, while food trucks on Svartbäcksgatan and the squares sell hot dogs and falafel.

At Gamla Uppsala, beside the royal mounds, a restaurant and café brews its own mead. In the city, the nations' pubs and the cafés around the cathedral and the river are where students and visitors meet.