Obelisk at Slottsbacken
The Obelisk at Slottsbacken adjacent to the southern entrances of the Roycal Castle in the Old Town is concidered to be the very centre point of the Swedish capital Stockholm.
The granite Obelisk is 22 m high, including its functional (sittable) postament of 5 m. From the Obelisk all street numbers in Stockholm have their common origin - there are only a handful of exclusive exceptions, and in these cases only some small streets originating from the street Birger Jarlsgatan.
The neo-Egyptian design of the obelisk was made by the artist Jean-Louis Desprez and it was errected by the inventor and colonel meanicus Jonas Lidströmer in 1800. The construction was at the time concidered to be complicated, since the Stockholm Obelisk is made of many and heavy stone boulders, and not as sometimes in the antiquity cut in one piece.
The Obelisk was commissioned by King Gustav III was a product of the kings gratitude to the burghers of Stockholm who guarded the city while the king was fight the Russian war in 1788-1790.