Swedish Museum of Natural History
Collections assembled by a man who sailed with Captain Cook — and they've been growing since 1739.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Stockholm offline.
Sweden's largest museum building holds natural history collections that predate the museum itself by 80 years. The 1916 Axel Anderberg building in Frescati anchors a campus so significant that Stockholm University eventually built its main campus alongside it. The Cosmonova annex adds Sweden's first purpose-built IMAX dome — and still its largest planetarium.
What to look for
- The dome topping Axel Anderberg's 1916 building — the defining silhouette of a structure that remains Sweden's largest museum building
- Cosmonova, opened 1993 as Sweden's first purpose-built IMAX dome and its largest planetarium
- The collections shaped by Anders Sparrman — student of Carl Linnaeus and participant in Cook's voyages — who was among the early keepers
Located in Frescati; Stockholm University's main campus is directly adjacent, so pair them in a single afternoon.
Swedish Museum of Natural History is one of 34 sights worth the detour in Stockholm, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Stockholm pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Stockholm
- Royal Swedish Academy of SciencesThis is the body that picks up the phone to tell physicists and chemists they've won the Nobel Prize.
- Avicii ArenaA 110-metre sphere that serves as the Sun in the world's largest scale model of the solar system — and you can walk right up to it.
- Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery)A 1920 cemetery built on old pine-covered gravel quarries that went on to reshape how the world designs burial grounds.
- Stockholm PalaceThe same ground has held a royal residence since the 1250s — the current palace took nearly six decades to finish, outlived its architect, and the Rococo interiors are largely unchanged.
- Vasa MuseumA 64-gun warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 — and is still almost entirely intact.
- Skansen150 actual Swedish buildings, shipped piece by piece to one hill — a whole country preserved before industry erased it.