The Stockholm sketching group met last Sunday to sketch the view from a cozy rooftop bar at Södermalm. Only the bar was closed, so we ended up outdoors on the roof of restaurant Gondolen instead, cold, but with a view over my fav spot to draw, Slussen.
The New Slussen project is already visible everywhere around this place, although the city hasn´t officially started the actual destruction of the old Slussen. There are big roadworks preparing for the destruction, huge holes, fences and central heating pipes just about everywhere. It´s getting harder to walk or bicycle past Slussen, there is always a new concrete barrier somewhere forcing you out of your normal ways.
The archeologists at the City Museum (white building to the left) are making the most of the roadworks, though. In the big shaft visible in this sketch, they have found a piece of a 17th century street and an old kitchen with a baking oven from 1601. In other shafts they have found traces of buildings and workshops from the 15th and 14th centuries. Digging here is like opening a temporary window to the past, and although I hate roadworks as much as the next bicyclist, it´s amazing to think what might be lying beneath the surface of the rest of the city…