Stockholm

That wealth made Stockholm the prize of the Kalmar Union, for whoever held it held the kingdom. In 1471 Sten Sture the Elder defeated Christian I of Denmark at Brunkeberg, but in 1520 Christian II took the town and, days after his coronation, had many of its leading nobles and burghers beheaded in the Stockholm Bloodbath. Gustav Vasa won it back three years later, ending the union, and found every second house standing empty.

Under the Vasa kings the burghers lost their old independence, and the town was bound to the crown. In 1634 it became the formal capital of a rising great power, and the government drew the realm's trade into it: from under 10,000 people early in the century it grew to more than 50,000 by the 1670s, while after the fire of 1625 straight new streets and a row of merchant palaces on the quay replaced part of the medieval town. In 1697 the old castle of Tre Kronor burned, and Stockholm Palace rose in its place. Plague in 1710 and defeat in the Great Northern War left the capital of a lost empire to stagnate, until Gustav III gave it a new square and, in 1782, a Royal Opera.