Hotel Class: 
4 Stars - 6 Opinions
Domkyrkoesplanaden 2, Vasteras, 721 09, SE
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6 Opinions
Lovely day
More souvenirs.
Vasteras' Cathedral
Bill & Bob's
Lilla Rytterne Church in now nothing more than a ruin, but this is a drawing of how the church probably would have looked like. The ruins of this church is 800 years old. But this place is much older than that though. They found runic stones here from around the year 1000
• Eskilstuna: not a real tourist destination, but it has some nice places. My favourite of all is the Fors Kyrka (Fors Church). Also worth visiting is the Klosterkyrka, sculpture 'Hand of God' by Miles, the historic area of "Rademachersmedjorna" and the museum "Faktorimuseet".
• Tidö slott: A beautiful castle with a toy museum.
• Ängsö Castle: A haunted castle from the 15th century and one if the many smaller castles in this area.
• Strängnäs: one of Sweden's oldest towns. The highlight of this city is its beautiful cathedral.
• Västerås: is one of the top 10 cities of Sweden. Suggestions: visit the park (Djäkneberget), interesting for the many boulders with inscriptions. The old part of town with historical houses at Kyrkbacken and the Cathedral.
• Örebro: is an university city and the 7th largest city in Sweden. Places to see are castle from the 13th century and Wadköping, which is the old town and now open air museum.
You can also read more about this area on my Mälaren page
You can still see many runic stones in Sweden, although most of them are in Södermanland and Uppland. Runic stones are high stones, standing up, and have rune signs. They are related to the stones with decoration (mostly with a motive from the Nordic myths) or also to stones without any inscriptions. The runic stones often were erected as a memory for people who had died in a battle. The majority of inscriptions, more than 90%, were made during the 11th century.
The runes themselves are an old form of Germanic writing, which originally were being scratched into wood, but later also into stone, ivory and others.
Not far from the city centre is a park called Djäkneberget. Djäkneberget is a hill and lays just a couple of hundred meters to the west of the cathedral and the town square. In former times the park was used as a meeting point by the students ("Djäkne" is an old word for student) and that is how this park came to be.
The park is really nice and you have a nice view over parts of Västerås from here. But thing I liked most about the park are these boulders with inscriptions. This boulder is in memory of Sam Lidman who is responsible for more than 500 of these inscriptions in the park. It’s great to read the various inscriptions on the boulders and think about what they mean. You need a Swedish guide though, hahaha, as most of the inscriptions are in Swedish. Luckily I had someone with me to translate it all for me :-)
Some of the boulders just contain a name of a historic person, but other inscriptions are longer and have a meaning. One example of the inscriptions is : "Var heller frij än annars träl - ämedan du kant tik röra." Which means: "Prefer to be free and not a slave - while you still can move." But there are many many more (over 500) and all food for thought.
This is a picture of the proba, just south of the cathedral. Proba is the old Latin word for school jail, and that is what this place was for! The jail was build by Johannes Rudbeckius and the 'tenants' called it a 'terrible place'. The jail was used for students that didn't behave, but also for priests and civil servants who had made mistakes on the job. Wow, can you imagine a 'school jail' these days for misbehaviour???
The proba was used as a jail until 1801 and it is the only one of its kind remaining today.
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Q: Commuting between Vesteras and Stockholm suburbs "Hi guys, I will most probably be moving to Vesteras in the near future. Like a lot of people, I love to live in Stockholm..."
A: "Check out train connections on www.sj.se. The last two winters, when we have had a lot of snow, SJ have had a lot of problems with cancelled and late trains though."
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Address: Domkyrkoesplanaden 2, Vasteras, 721 09, SE
