Gothenburg Gothenburg has a wide selection of cultural establishments worth seeing. A new opera house was inaugurated in 1994, the Gothenburg Opera. Museums include art (Gothenburg Museum of Art) and (Göteborgs Konsthall), design and handcrafts (the Röhss Museum), sea history, natural history, science, East India, and the Museum of World Culture inaugurated in 2004.

Malmo Four major attractions are under the direction of Malmö Museer (tel. 040/341-000). Heading the list is Malmöhus Castle, on Malmöhusvägen, founded in the 15th century by Eric of Pomerania and rebuilt by Christian III in the 16th century. Once a prison (the earl of Bothwell, third husband of Mary Queen of Scots, was incarcerated here in 1568-73), the castle now houses the City Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Aquarium and Tropicarium, and the Konstmuseet. The last contains a collection of old Scandinavian masters, especially those from southern Sweden, such as Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911), one of Sweden's best landscape painters and a forerunner of European modernism. Most interesting is the collection of Russian oil paintings from around 1900 -- the largest collection outside Russia. It also houses some modern art and good samples of Swedish furniture and textiles. The lyrical sketches in the foyer are by Carl Larsson, one of Sweden's best-known artists. West of Stortorget, the castle can be easily reached on foot.

Stockholm The most renowned national museum is the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts, with Sweden's largest collection of art: 16,000 paintings and 30,000 objects of art handicraft. The collection stems back to the days of Gustav Vasa in the 16th century, and has since been expanded with works by artists such as Rembrandt, and Antoine Watteau, as well as constituting a main part of Sweden's art heritage, manifested in the works of Alexander Roslin, Anders Zorn, Johan Tobias Sergel, Carl Larsson, Carl Fredrik Hill and Ernst Josephson. Most of Stockholm's state-operated museums have free entrance. The Museum of Modern Art, or Modern Muséet, is Sweden's national museum of modern art. It has works by foremost modern artists such as Picasso and Salvadore Dali.