Haga

There are neighborhoods that carry their own promise of happiness, and Haga is one of them. Narrow cobblestone streets, wooden houses in food-red and pale yellow tones, and a smell of freshly brewed coffee that never seems to leave the air — that is Haga. Gothenburg's oldest preserved district is a reminder of what a city can be before it transforms into motorways and shopping centers.

Haga was established as far back as the 17th century and was for a long time one of Gothenburg's poorest quarters. Here lived craftsmen, fishermen, and sailors in the characteristic "landshövdingehus" — an architectural response to an old fire law that prohibited wooden buildings over one story inside the city. The solution was elegant and typically Gothenburgian: the ground floor was built in stone and the upper floors in wood. Seen from the outside, this gives the buildings an almost pudding-like texture, broad and heavy at the bottom and lighter and more weathered at the top.