Örebro Things to Do Tips by sim1 Top 5 Page for this destination

The "svarvarehuset"

This is the "Svarvarehuset" or the woodworker's house. You can go in here and see him at work, and also have and also browse around in the little shop where you can buy his work. Woodworking is not the only craft you can see here. You can also see blacksmith, painting and the silversmith and of course buy their work.

Mmmmm...... the bakery!

Mmmmm, doesn't it look mouth-watering delicious!! And I can tell you it tastes just as good as it looks! The bakery is not only a 'must see' visit, but also a 'must taste'! The cookies I tasted were fantastic!!! Hahaha, I even would consider driving all the way back to Örebro to try out some more delicious cookies and cakes that they sell here :-)

The bakery

Not that far from the phone booth, there is a little road on the left hand side. This is where you can find the bakery of Wadköping. It looks very picturesque from the outside, but mmmm, wait until you get inside! See my next tip for all the mouth-watering things you can buy here!

Why they did they move these houses?

This is a close up picture of the Cajsa Warg Hus. When you take a closer look like this you can see how crooked it is. I love that though, it looks so picturesque!

When I visited Wadköping the thing that questioned me most was why they moved all these houses to this area. But moving houses is nothing new. Old timbered houses have been moved ever since the middle Ages, but a project as big as Wadköping was something new.

In a part of Örebro there was an almost untouched timber quarter with narrow streets and twisting alleys. But the houses fell in decay over time and had little or no sanitation. They area was not very attractive to live in, and with the need of Örebro to have new housing and shopping areas, they decided that everything old was to be knocked down.
Luckily a campaign was started by the County Antiquarian, Bertil Waldén, to save at least some of the better old buildings. And that is how Waldköping started, a small quarter behind the city park on the banks of the River Svartån.

Old wooden houses

Wadköping is quite new, and at the same time very old. The open air museum of Wadköping exists since 1965, but the buildings are much older. In the village of Wadköping you can see a collection of ancient buildings from Örebro and the surrounding countryside. There are many 18th-century wooden houses in the traditional red colour, which you can still see a lot around in Sweden. Besides the red houses there are also lovely bright 19th-century wooden houses. They all have been moved to this site in the City Park, together with two museum buildings – the King’s House (16th century) and Cajsa Warg’s House (17th century).

Map of Wadköping

This is a map of Wadköping that you can see at the entrance of the open air museum. On it you can see the location of the houses in the museum and a short description of them.
Wadköping is situated on the banks of the River Svartån. It's not that hard to find, although it is somewhat outside of the city centre. But there are lots of signs pointing you in the right direction to find Wadköping easily.

In the middle of the city

It was a beautiful day when I was in Örebro, and it was nice to walk around the castle in the sunshine. The location of the castle is a bit unusual though; it is in the middle of the city centre of Örebro. In the background on the right side of the picture (click on it to enlarge it) you can see the buildings of the city centre.
If you follow the road signs to the city centre you can't miss finding the castle.

The jail

The guided tour continues to the jail of Örebro Castle. This is also the spot where the exhibition about the history of Örebro is. It's not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, except for here at the jail, so this is the only picture of the interior that I have of Örebro castle. Not that I really minded in this case, as the interior wasn't so nice to see.
The guided tour was more about the stories of the castle and the people living here, than showing the interior. Living in this jail for example wasn't the most fun part of it. You would be chained around your ankles, hands and also you neck and locked up in the little cell. The drinking water you would get
would come straight out of the moat, and that wasn't the best water to drink. Like in a lot of castles, the moat was used like a sewer for the toilets.... arghhh... can't even imagine drinking water like that!
The huge parties that were held when other royals visited, sounded a better place to be.... although.... were they? Hahaha, hearing all the details, maybe it wasn't so very pleasant at all. The dinners would be huge, and in total the meal would have 37 dishes. And you had to eat from each and every dish! Of course that is almost impossible to do, so they had a solution to that. After a few courses of the meal, they would throw up, so they would make more room in the stomach for the next dish. They actually had a little feather next to their plate to put in the back in the throat to make the vomiting more easily. arghh.... not sure if I like that idea, bweh!

There were several stories like this about life in the castle and were fun to hear. Like the wedding night tradition of the king. But to hear about that one you have to go to the castle yourself and take the guided tour. Hahaha, VT would probably censor this tip when I write about that, lol :-)

Separate entrance for the prince

To make things more complicated, the prince should have a separate door as well. It's located on the other corner of the inner courtyard, and it's now the entrance to the tourist office. You can see two doors here as well, for the two royal children. The fun part is that the two doors lead to the same staircase. The doors suggest real 'separate' entrances, as you can't see from the outside that they lead to one and the same stairs.

King and Queen door

The guided tour starts in the courtyard of the castle, and you can hear all about the building history of the castle. You can clearly see at points all the alterations that have been made to the castle over the centuries. A few fun details were pointed out, like the two sets of doors that are in opposite corners in the inner courtyard. The first set of doors is for the king and queen. In those days it was very important that the King should have its own entrance. So the solution was to give the king and the queen there own entrance door as you can see on the picture. Of course the door for the king should be much bigger than the one for the queen, so that makes it the door on the right side in the picture the 'king’s door'.
The doors actually lead to different parts of the castle. The king and queen didn't like each other very much, so they lived in separate quarters of the castle.