There's modem work alongside the ageing tapestries and furniture, including Art Nouveau coffee pots and vases, and the intelligent simplicity of Swedish wooden chair design. Ifs the second floor, though, that's of most engaging interest. There's a plethora of European and Mediterranean sculpture and some mesmerising sbrteenth and seventeenthcentury Russian Orthodox icons. The paintings are equally wide ranging and of a similarly high quality. Something of a coup for the museum is Rembrandt's Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, one of his largest monumental paintings, in room 33. Picturing a scene from Tacitus' History, the bold work shows a gathering of wellarmed chieftains. There are minor works by other, later masters (most notably Renoir), and some fine sixteenth to eighteenthcentury works by Swedish artists. One, by Carl Gustav Pilo, a late eighteenth4;entury painting, depicts the coronation of Gustav III in the Storkyrkan in Gamla Stan, the detail interesting since it shows the church with white plaster columns and not the redbrick of today. So much is packed into this museum that it can quickly become confusing and overwhelming. To wade through it all, splash out on the guidebook money well spent. Norrmalm Modem Stockholm, its wide streets, shops, office blocks and small parks, lies ediately to the north and east of Gamla Stan, and is spUt into two distinct tions. You'll probably arrive in the city in Norrmalm, and can't avoid passing strt ะบ on your wanderings around the city. East of here, the eets begm to widen out into classier, residential Ostermalm (see below). Around Gustav AdolfsTorg tr on the waterfront, at the foot of Norrbro, is Gustav Adolfs Torg, more a island than a square these days, with the nineteenth4:entury Opera House (Operan) its proudest and most notable building. It was here in an earlier opera house on the same site at a masked ball in 1792 that King Gustav III was shot by one Captain Ankarstrom, an admirer of Rousseau and member of the aristocratic opposition. The story is recorded in Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera, and you'll find Gustav's ball costume, as well as the assassin's pistols and mask, displayed in the palace armoury in Gamla Stan. The opera's famous restaurant, Operakdllaren, which faces the water, is hellishly expensive, the trendy cafe less so. A statue of King Gustav II Adolf marks the centre of the square where, apart from the views, the only affordable entertainment is to rent a fishing rod and trv to pull salmon out of Strommen, the waters flowing through the centre of ihe city. Stockholmers have had the right to fish this outlet from Lake Malaren to the Baltic since the seventeenth century; it's not as difficult as it sounds and there's usually someone standing on one of the bridges nearby trying their luck. Just off the square, at Fredsgatan 2, is the Medelhavsmuseet, a sparkling museum devoted to Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities (Tues llam 9pm, WedSun llampm; 30kr, students 15kr).