Stortorget in Växjö

During the fall of 2022, Växjö municipality is doing several minor earthworks within Stortorget, including for electricity lines and for a new, stable footing for the large Christmas tree. Museiarkeologi sydost, part of the Kalmar county museum, follows the work, takes advantage of finds and documents the traces of the old city that come to light. In the square there are, among other things, remains of medieval Växjö, which makes the area very exciting. Follow the exciting work in our story map, which contains interactive maps with images, films and texts.

Story map about archaeological investigation at Stortorget in Växjö (arcgis.com)

With the cathedral as its center, the city of Växjö grew during the Middle Ages. Through the archaeological investigations carried out at the Cathedral Center, a great deal is now known about the eastern part of the old city. Much less is known about the western part of the city, around the current Stortorget. This was the district where the merchants and artisans lived with their households.

Stortorget is one of the few places in Växjö where there are still large, coherent cultural layers from the old city preserved underground. All excavation work carried out within the square is therefore done with the assistance of an archaeologist.

 

On July 27, 1658, the wooden city of Växjö with its narrow streets and irregular quarters was hit by a devastating fire. The city had then probably looked the same since the Middle Ages. Barely a month after the fire, a map was drawn with a completely new town plan. This map shows the buildings of the old city but also the plan of what the new grid-shaped city with straight streets would look like. The town plan from 1658 laid the foundation for all further development in the center of Växjö.

On the 1658 map, you can see that at the site of today's square, there were blocks of land with buildings on both sides of a street. The town's old square was small and actually consisted of a widening of the southern part of the current Kronobergsgatan. The map also shows the new rectangular blocks that were built within Stortorget after the city fire on both sides of the now widened street.

Gradually, the city needed a larger square and the small square area in the southern part of Kronobergsgatan was gradually widened. On a city map from 783, you can see that they got a slightly larger square (the letter O on the map) and that the town hall was on the south side of the new square. Within what is today Stortorget's southern part, the governor's offices and a prison were also located.

In 1799, the city suffered another fire. After the fire, the square was expanded to include what is today Stortorget's southern part. A last major city fire occurred in 1843. They then chose not to build up the building within the northern part of the current square. Instead, today's open square was created with the governor's residence majestically placed on the square's northern side.

But beneath the surface of the square are the remains of the various generations of buildings that have existed on the site.