Stockholm City Hall (Stadshuset) and the Nobel Prize Museum

Every year on 10 December (the anniversary of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel's death in 1896), Stockholm steps onto the global stage for the Nobel Prize ceremony at the Concert Hall followed by the televised royal banquet at Stockholm City Hall (Stockholms stadshus). Standing on the eastern tip of Kungsholmen island right where Riddarfjärden meets Norrström, architect Ragnar Östberg's red-brick building (built between 1911 and 1923 from eight million handmade bricks) is the pinnacle of Swedish National Romantic architecture, blending Venice's Doge's Palace with medieval Nordic castles.

Inside Stockholm City Hall: The Blue Hall and Golden Hall

Because City Hall is a working seat of municipal government where the 101-member city council meets, the interior can only be visited on an official 45-minute guided tour (offered daily in English and Swedish; book online or at the ticket office inside the courtyard):

• The Blue Hall (Blå hallen): despite its name, the vast banquet hall where 1,300 Nobel laureates, royals and guests dine is not blue at all; Östberg liked the warm red colour of the hand-chiseled brickwork so much that he abandoned his original plan to plaster it blue, leaving a monumental marble staircase where guests descend beneath a star-marked balcony.
• The Council Chamber and Prince's Gallery: walk under the exposed Viking longhouse-style timber roof of the Council Chamber, then pass through the Prince's Gallery, where Prince Eugen painted a mirroring fresco of the Södermalm waterfront opposite the real bay windows.
• The Golden Hall (Gyllene salen): the climax of the tour, a 44-metre ceremonial ballroom whose walls shimmer with more than 18 million glass and gold-leaf mosaic tiles designed by 25-year-old artist Einar Forseth, presided over by the monumental Byzantine-style figure of the Queen of Lake Mälaren holding Stockholm in her lap.

Climbing the Three Crowns Tower and the Nobel Prize Museum

From May to September, buy a separate timed ticket to climb the 106-metre City Hall Tower (an elevator takes you roughly halfway up the brick shaft before you walk the remaining spiral passage to the open belfry beneath the three golden crowns of Sweden's coat of arms). Afterwards, walk fifteen minutes across the bridge to Stortorget in Gamla Stan to visit the Nobel Prize Museum, where hundreds of laureates' artefacts glide across the ceiling on an overhead conveyor cable and the bistro serves the classic Nobel banquet ice cream medal (check the undersides of the bistro chairs, signed in white marker by visiting Nobel laureates).