Gothenburg

Gothenburg is a port city on the west coast of Sweden, at the mouth of the Göta älv river facing the Kattegat. Volvo built its first car in the city in the 1920s, and Volvo Cars still has its head office and main plant at Torslanda.

King Gustavus Adolphus founded the city in 1621 as a fortified port on the west coast, and Dutch engineers laid out its center with canals in the style of Amsterdam. The Swedish East India Company was founded in Gothenburg in 1731, and its ships brought tea, silk and porcelain from Canton for more than seven decades. The town drew merchants from Scotland and the Netherlands, who gave it a trading class of foreign origin. In the 19th century the port shipped timber and iron, and the city built shipyards on the river.

SKF, founded in the city, makes ball bearings and seals for machines of all kinds. The Volvo Group builds trucks and buses from its head office in Gothenburg, and Stena Line runs ferries from the port to Denmark and Germany.

Liseberg, an amusement park opened in the 1920s, has wooden roller coasters and gardens in the middle of the city. Haga, an old working-class district of wooden houses, is known for cafes that sell cinnamon buns the size of a plate. Feskekôrka, the fish market hall, was built in the 1870s in the shape of a Gothic church. At the top of the main avenue stands the bronze Poseidon by Carl Milles, in front of the art museum. The city's heavy metal bands, among them In Flames and At the Gates, created the Gothenburg sound in the 1990s.