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Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and the most populous city in Scandinavia, with 905,184 people living in the municipality, approximately 1.4 million in the urban area, and a total population close to 2.2 million in the metropolitan area. The city is spread across 14 distinct islands on the coast in the south-east of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic sea. The area has been settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC, and was founded as a city in 1252 by Birger Jarl.

Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The region alone accounts for over a third of the country's GDP, and is among the top 10 regions in Europe by GDP per capita. It's an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of the Europe's top ranking universities, such as the Karolinska Institute, and hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the city's most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited non-art museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is well known for its decoration of the stations; it has been called the longest art gallery in the world. Sweden's national football arena is located north of the city centre, in Solna. Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Stockholm is the seat of the Government of Sweden and most government agencies, including the highest courts in the Judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The Government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Minister's residence is adjacent at the Sager House. The Stockholm Palace is the official residence and principal workplace of the Swedish monarch, while the Drottningholm Palace, a World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Stockholm, serves as the Royal Family's private residence.

Stockholm is one of the most crowded museum-cities in the world with around 100 museums, visited by millions of people every year. The most renowned national museum is the Nationalmuseum, with Sweden's largest collection of art: 16,000 paintings and 30,000 objects of art handicraft. The collection dates back to the days of Gustav Vasa in the 16th century, and has since been expanded with works by artists such as Rembrandt, and Antoine Watteau, as well as constituting a main part of Sweden's art heritage, manifested in the works of Alexander Roslin, Anders Zorn, Johan Tobias Sergel, Carl Larsson, Carl Fredrik Hill and Ernst Josephson.

The Museum of Modern Art, or Moderna Museet, is Sweden's national museum of modern art. It has works by famous modern artists such as Picasso and Salvador Dalí.

Other notable museums:

• Stockholm City Museum
• Fotografiska, museum of photography
• Skansen, the archetype of open-air museums, inaugurated 1891
• Nordic Museum, dedicated to the cultural history and ethnography of Sweden
• Royal Coin Cabinet, dedicated to the history of money
• The Vasa Museum, now with the reconstruction of the missing parts of the Vasa Ship