•  
•  
•  
•  
•  

HISTORY

The area in which Art Hotel is situated was in earlier times called Johanneshöjden (the hill of Johannes) and has always been a well-documented place in the history of Stockholm. During the 17th century, this was a barren and deserted place with few inhabitants. The blocks around the first chapel built in 1651 were poor and inhospitable, and the churchyard was considered a dreaded place for hauntings and other frightful things by people living in the neighbourhood. There are two memorials from the 17th century near where the church of Johannes stands today. The first memorial is called Drottninghuset (the Queen´s House), and is situated on Johannesgatan 16. Drottninghuset was built in 1687 on the initiative of Queen Ulrika Eleonora (1665-1693), and was used as a charity house for the poor in the parish of Johannes. The second monument from the 17th century is the bell tower in Johannesparken (the park of Johannes), built in 1692.

The area’s bad reputation ceased in the end of the 19th century when new inhabitants settled down in the blocks around the park. A new, modern church on the hill was also under construction at that time. The people who moved to the hill of Johannes in the 1870´s were publishers, writers and musicians, who, according to themselves, had moved there because of the area’s “extraordinary atmosphere and its soft scent of literature”. By the end of the century, the hill had become a water-hole for the cultural circles of Stockholm, and was often entitled “little Montparnasse”. Since the 1870´s and onward a number of writers has described the churchyard and located stories in their poems and books to this beautiful place, among others the Swedish writers Hjalmar Söderberg and Agnes von Krusenstjerna. The church that stands on the hill today is a typical gothic church, and was initiated by King Oscar II in 1890. The fire station was initiated in 1878, and is located at the south side of the churchyard.