You either have to be very quick and methodical, or stay another day. Unless otherwise stated, the Gothenburg Card grants free entry to ail the museums and sights detailed below. twentyodd low bridges of the central canal, familiar Dutch pictures emerge. Out on the open river, amongst the hulking dry docks and gaping harbours, it's difficult to reconcile the mess with the ordered houses and parks of the centre. Another overview is available from the Goteborg Utkiken OuneAug daily llam6pm; 20kr), down at the harbour (see below). This redandwhite striped Legolike structure, designed by the Scot Ralph Erskine, provides panoramic views of the city from 86 metres up. The centre: old Gothenburg and the harbour If your time is limited, sticking within the limits defined by the central canal roughly old and commercial Gothenburg is a logical first choice. Gustav Adolfs Torg, alongside the original central canal, is a pompous, windswept square, where a statue of the swaggering Gustav himself surveys the city. The buildings that surround him are worth pausing at. The nineteenthcentury Borshuset, or Exchange building, faces the canal, its white, doublecolumned facade topped with figurines and split by four intricate wooden doors; and flanking the western side of the square is the fine RAdhus, originally built in 1672 as a court house and rebuilt m 1817. Only a few hundred metres around the corner (towards the river), die Kronhuset, off Kronhusgatan, is a contrasting surprise a typical seventeenth century Dutch design and Gothenburg's oldest building. Built in 1643, its red brick walls and green roof slates look like the backdrop to a Vermeer. Once a meeting hall and supposed site of a seventeenthcentuiy parliament, it now houses a historical езЛ1Ыйоп (MayAug MonFri 10am4pm, Sat & Sun 10am 5pm; SeptApril TuesFri llam4pm, Sat & Sun 10am5pm; 25kr). The cobbled courtyard outside is flanked by tiie mideighteenthcentury Kronhusbodarna (same hours and price), now togged up as nineteenth4:entury craft shops selling sweets and souvenirs nowhere near as tacky as the tourist office's description of them as Ye Olde Shops. The square and its buildings are supposed to convey something of Gothenburg's past, but it's hard going with no surviving old town to supply a background. II. Г!!"!! «1 d i •II I 11 и II I iililllll liliiiniiilili ' f For that background, head for the Historical Museum (MayAug MonFn llam4pm. Sat & Sun 10am5pm; SeptApril TuesFri llam4pm. Wed ипШ 9pm, Sat & Sun 10am5pm; 25kr), a few streets away at Norra Hamngatan U which is comprehensive, and particularly strong on local matters. Housed in t"® eighteenthcentury headquarters of the East India Company, the collections, rooms full of furniture and decorative art are accessible enough, though as wi j many similar museums in Sweden, the whole is rescued from repetition complementary ethnographical and archaeological collections.