| Stortorget (Grand Square)
| | Via the text icon You will get a guide to a walk in the central parts of Helsingborg.
You can go to the left menu and find more information in the historic part of Øresundstid.
You return to the guide when You click on the title "Town Walk i Helsingborg" in the left meny. |
Magnus Stenbock in Helsingborg
The Swedish king was far away, so Magnus Stenbock, who was Scania´s general governor, organized the Swedish defence. He gathered a large army in Småland, as the Danes had entered Sweden all the way up to Karlshamn in Blekinge. Stenbock succeeded in gathering 16.000 men, who went into Scania in the end of January 1710. The Danes retreated towards Helsingborg and took up position north of town under the command of major general Rantzau.
February 28th 1710 the two armies clashed in the battle of Ringstorp outside Helsingborg, and it ended in a crushing Danish defeat, which Stenbock´s courier, Henrik Hammarberg reported to Stockholm.
Stenbock, Magnus | 
Message of the Victory of Magnus Stenbock | 
Memorial Stone for the Battle of Helsingborg | 
Fortification of the Swedish Coast | 
Helsingborg 2010 |
Helsingborg as Example
If you want to follow the development from historicism´s style imitation at the end of the century via jugend and art nouveau to the ideal of modernism, Helsingborg is a fine example. Helsingborg expanded heavily in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and a great need for new buildings was the result. The architectural styles, which marked this period were therefore richly represented in the town. Classic style imitation can be found to a great extent. At Stortorget´s (the great square) upper part is the medieval inspired terrace and around the square there are many style imitations, for instance the Scania Bank building (opposite the post office) with baroque imitations and the Trade Bank from 1904 with antique touches. The city architect Alfred Hellerström designed the Trade Bank and he also designed Helsingborg´s town hall and the university library in Lund, both in neo-gothic monumental style.
Alfred Hellerström was then inspired to design buildings in the jugend style, which immediately after the turn of the century had a short, but important influence on especially the upper-class milieu. Immediately before 1910 an entire villa neighbourhood in this style was built in the Olympia district. Besides Hellerström several other architects participated in the designing of these jugend style neighbourhoods, among them Carl Rosenius and Ola Anderson. The houses had round towers and round corners, arched frontons, varied window styles and many ornaments, altogether a clear break from the 19th century´s strict building styles.
A strange building, in the transition period between classicism and modernism is the crematorium from 1929. It was designed by Ragnar Östberg, who is mostly known as the architect behind the town hall in Stockholm. The dome of the crematorium, which inside is carried by classic columns, has a historicist element, but the smooth surface points towards a pure modernism.
The Terrace in Helsingborg | 
Scania Bank | 
The Art Nouveau District in Helsingborg | 
The Art Nouveau District in Helsingborg | 
The Art Nouveau District in Helsingborg |
The Art Nouveau District in Helsingborg | 
The Crematorium in Helsingborg | 
The Crematorium in Helsingborg |
The Age of the Exhibitions
The optimism for the future was clearly shown in the many world exhibitions, which were arranged and they were meant to show all that man now was able to make. These large, spectacular events went hand in hand with the fast industrial expansion in Europe. After the first world exhibition in London in 1851, Vienna followed in 1873 and Paris was next in 1889.
The display of goods, buildings and inventions were a kind of directory of the future, and some times unusual edifices left as monuments for the exhibitions, like for instance the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Also the North was seized with exhibition ardour and in the Sound region you could experience the so-called Industry and Art Exhibition in Copenhagen in 1872 and 1888. In Helsingborg Oscar II opened an Industry and Art Exhibition in June 1903 and at the same time opened the terrace stairs under Kärnan. Lund invited to an exhibition in 1907, where most of the town park was laid out.
The Industrial Exhibition in Helsingborg |
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