When Désirée Clary – wife of French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte – arrived in Stockholm in 1811, she was appalled. It was true that she would eventually become Queen Desideria of Sweden and Norway, her husband having been elected heir-presumptive to the throne the previous year. But she left her new capital as soon as she possibly could, and thereafter returned to it only under protest. ‘Do not’, she insisted, ‘talk to me of Stockholm. I get a cold whenever I hear the word’. 

Not many first-time visitors to Stockholm react quite like this. Most people find it at least impressive, and for many of us the reaction is much warmer than that...