Klara (

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

: Klarakvarteren or the Klara quarters) is a part of lower Norrmalm in the central part of

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

. It has its name from Klara Church. Today the name, though not often used in daily speech, has become synonymous with the old city that once occupied lower Norrmalm.

"The Klara Bohemians"

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the Klara area was characterized by old, cheap housing and many small shops and workshops. It was known for being home to several Swedish newspapers, bars, and cheap hotels, and was consequently also an area frequented by writers, journalists, and poets. "The Klara Bohemians" was a name given to an amorphous group of writers and poets in the 1930s and 1940s, who lived in the area or lingered at its bars and cafés, hoping to sell articles or poems to newspaper editors. The most well-known of the Klara Bohemians, poet Nils Ferlin, is today depicted in

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...

form close to the church, lighting a

cigarette A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opp ...

Renewal of Klara

During the 1950s and 1960s Klara went through an extensive

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

project. The area's old, small-scale, irregular, and often run-down homes and shops were torn down and replaced by major roads and large, modern office blocs. The Klara demolitions have subsequently come to be viewed as a particularly notorious example of the large-scale urban redevelopment projects that erased many pre-modern city centers in mid-century Sweden.

Notable buildings in Klara

* Arvfurstens palats * Sagerska Palatset * Klara kyrka * Kulturhuset * Sergels torg

References

Geography of Stockholm {{Stockholm-geo-stub

"The Klara Bohemians"

Renewal of Klara

Notable buildings in Klara

See also

References