Luleå is one of the largest cities in northern Sweden. It is known historically from 1327, when there was a village at the place of present day Gammelstad. The village got a church and a marketplace, and this led to the founding of Luleå by Gustav II Adolf with market town rights in 1621. In 1649, the town was moved to its current location, which happened because the harbor had proven too shallow. However, Luleå was ravaged by fires several times, but it grew slowly through the centuries.

In the middle of the 19th century, there were only approximately 1,400 inhabitants in Luleå. In 1887, large parts of the city were ravaged by a fire, but at the end of the century the railway Malmbanen opened between Gällivare and Luleå, which thereby became a shipping port for iron ore. Hand in hand with general industrialization it created great prosperity in the town, and a spacious urban plan was designed after the 1887 fire with a lot of new construction.

Today, the center of Luleå is located on a peninsula with a right-angled street network. The City Hall is in the middle, and it was built in 1958 according to the architect Bo Cederlöf’s design in the style of modernism of the time. The town hall is seat for the local government in Luleå, and it is a high-rise building opposite the green area Stadsparken, from which you can also see the large Stadshotellet from the 1890s.

From Stadsparken you can continue to Luleå Domkyrka, which is the city’s cathedral. It was inaugurated with its 67-meter church tower in 1893 after four years of construction. The large church was initiated as a replacement for Gustaf’s Church, which was destroyed by the town fire in 1887. Close to the cathedral you can visit cultural institutions such as Norrbottens Museum, which is a regional museum for Norrbotten. Here you can see explore interesting collections in archaeology, ethnography, art and history. Not far from the museum, you can see the so-called Residence in Residensgatan.

The Residence is a beautiful wooden building from 1852 and the residence and representative premises for the governor of the Norrbottens Län, who is the Swedish government’s highest representative in the county. If you continue north, you can visit the theater Norrbottensteatern, and east from here you will find Norra Hamn and the modern Kulturens Hus. In the building there are several concert halls and an art gallery.

When you are in modern Luleå, it is obvious to also visit the original location of the city at Gammelstad, where Gammelstad’s Kyrkstad is a unique collection of more than 400 houses around the local church from the 15th century. The various buildings form a church town that was widespread in northern Scandinavia in earlier times. The many houses were built to house churchgoers who traveled here from the region around the church and who could not get home before dark. Gammelstad’s Kyrkstad is today included in UNESCO’s list of world cultural heritage.