Lund

Lund city contains four main city squares that are connected by a number of roads and passages that represent the main city centre containing numerous restaurants, shops and bars. Clemenstorget is a tree-covered city square located alongside the railway and associated station, hosts a small market and is the central terminus of the city's tramway. Bantorget is a green park-square close to the central station and Lund's Grand Hotel is placed there. The city hall is located on the main city square - Stortorget which often features concerts and various cultural and political events. Mårtenstorget hosts the Lund Market Hall, has many restaurants, food trucks and bars around it and serves as a market square during the daytime. In earlier times the square was used as a cattle market and was known as "Oxtorget". Smaller city squares in Lund include Domkyrkoplatsen, Petriplatsen, Västra stationstorget, Sockertorget and Knut den Stores Torg.

The Lundagård park in central Lund.

The Botanical Garden in Lund

The pond in Stadsparken.

Stadsparken, Lund's main city park.

Lund's most central park is Lundagård, which, along with the adjoining University square, forms the centre of the University. The park is dominated by historic buildings including Lund Cathedral, Lund University Main Building, and Kungshuset. The trees of the park are home to a large colony of rooks.

The much larger main city park (Stadsparken) is located in the south-west corner of the city center. The site was used for the Lund Exhibition in 1907 and subsequently developed into a public park between 1909 and 1911. The park contains planted gardens, a small lake, a children's playground and bandstands, as well as the public swimming center Högevallsbadet and the former buildings of Lund Observatory. It also has a menagerie that houses different varieties of birds.

Other significant areas of greenery in the city include the Botanical Garden (Botaniska trädgården) and Sankt Hans Hill in the north of the city. The nature preserve Rinnebäck Gorge (Rinnebäcksravinen), The Källby dams (Källby dammar) and the community park Folkparken are located in the western part of the city. The nature preserve Nöbbelövs Marshland (Nöbbelövs mosse) is located in the northwest of the city.

Popular places for swimming close to the city are the beaches in neighboring Lomma, Bjärred and Malmö and lakes such as the nature preserve Billebjer and the Dalby quarry (Dalby stenbrott) in the eastern countryside of the city.

Lund, like the rest of far southern Sweden, has an oceanic climate. The climate is relatively mild compared to other locations at similar latitudes, or even somewhat further south, mainly because of its proximity to the sea. Because of Lund's northerly latitude, daylight lasts as long as 17 hours at midsummer, and only around 7 hours in mid-winter.

Summers are warm and pleasant with average high temperatures of 23 °C (73 °F) and lows of around 14 °C (57 °F), but temperatures often exceed 25 °C (77 °F) and heat waves are common during the summer. Winters are quite chilly, with temperatures steady between −1 and 3 °C (30 and 37 °F). Lund has arguably the mildest climate of the country in average highs. In terms of yearly means and average lows Falsterbo is marginally milder.

Rainfall is light to moderate throughout the year with an average of 169 wet days. Snowfall occurs sparingly, mainly from December to March, but snow cover does not typically remain for a long time, and some winters are virtually free of snow.

The university dominates much of the centre of Lund. It was founded in 1666 following the transfer of Scania to Sweden under the Treaty of Roskilde and is the second-oldest university in Sweden after Uppsala University. Its traditional centre is in Lundagård park but stretches out towards the north east of the city where the large engineering faculty is located. Today, Lund University is one of northern Europe's largest, with eight faculties, 41,000 students and over 2,000 separate courses.[34] It is and has consistently ranked in the world top 100 universities[35] and is a member of the League of European Research Universities as well as the global Universitas 21 network.[36]

Katedralskolan, the cathedral school, founded in 1085, is the oldest school in Scandinavia. Today it is a high gymnasium with about 1,400 students studying in five different programmes.[37]

Östervångskolan is a specialskola (special school) for D/deaf and hard of hearing students, providing education in Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. It accepts students from Skåne and surrounding areas.[4] The school was founded in 1871 as Skånes Anstalt för Döfstumma i Lund (Skåne Institute for the Dead and Dumb) and had its premises on Östervångsvägen until 2016 when it relocated to Tunaskolan.[38][39][40] The International School of Lund Katedralskolan (ISLK) later moved to the Östervångsvägen site.[41]

The Royal Swedish Physiographic Society is a learned society based in Lund.[42]

Numerous prominent figures from the literary world lived and worked in Lund, often in association with the university and theatre. Prominent examples include Esias Tegnér, writer, poet and bishop, and August Strindberg, playwright, novelist and poet. A longer list is given below with other notable natives. The Lund novel is a genre in its own right, a bildungsroman in which a young student experiences life in Lund, Copenhagen and sometimes Österlen whilst maturing as an individual. The Lund novel is exemplified by the work of Fritiof Nilsson Piraten and Frank Heller.

The spex are a form of student theatre particular to Nordic universities, with a strong tradition in Lund. They are parodistic musical plays, often setting well-known music to new lyrics and mixing up the historical and the present in unconventional intrigues. Comedians Hans Alfredson and Anders Jansson started their careers in the Lund spex.[45][46]

The concluding scenes in Ingmar Bergman's classic film Wild Strawberries are set in Lund.[47]

The Lund International Architecture Film Festival is held annually in the autumn.[48]

The Bosmåla cottage is part of the open-air museum Kulturen, which hosts a collection of historical Scanian buildings.

Lund hosts the largest open-air museum of Scania, Kulturen. Kulturen is the second oldest dedicated open-air museum in the world. Founded in 1892 by Georg Karlin, it consists of more than 30 buildings, as well as collections exhibiting Scanian art, crafts, local archaeology and history.[49]

Several museums are attached to the university. The Lund University Historical Museum is based in the Lundagård park.[50] Its exhibitions were updated in 2018 and cover the history, archeology and zoology of Scania. There is a separate Lund Cathedral museum.[51] The Museum of Sketches for Public Art is a unique museum that documents the development of public artworks.[52] The Vattenhallen Science Center, connected to the university's engineering faculty, has an interactive presentation of science and research.[53]

The Lund carnival has been held every four years since the mid-nineteenth century: traditional accounts say it originated at a wedding in 1849 (the four-year intervals place the party in 2002, 2006, 2010, etc.). Arranged by the students of the university, from the 1950s onwards the event has grown in size and intensity (with some 5,500 volunteers 2010), but it remains an amateur event. Midway between a music and stage fair, a city festival, and an outpouring of satire, parody and general madness. Some students dress up in costumes, often relating to and poking fun at current issues, and parade in wagons. Others perform humorous skits in the evenings. The carnival revues and other stage entertainments have launched a number of well-known entertainers and actors over the years.

Lund's cultural venue, Mejeriet.

Lund has long been a regional centre for classical and church music. In particular, Lund is renowned for its vibrant amateur choir scene, with choirs such as Carolinae damkör, Domkyrkokören, Katedralkören, Lunds akademiska kör, Lund Chamber Choir (Swedish: Lunds Kammarkör), Lunds Studentsångförening, Lunds vokalensemble, and the Svanholm Singers. Since 2006, Lund has been the host of the biannual Lund International Choral Festival.[54] Classical orchestras based in the city include the Lund City Orchestra, the Academic Orchestra and Lund New Chamber Orchestra.

In more recent decades, Lund has also developed a lively pop and jazz scene. The cultural venue Mejeriet opened in 1987 in a former dairy building just outside the city park.[55] It has hosted concerts by both well-known and emerging bands. The pop singer and television presenter Måns Zelmerlöw was born and grew up in Lund. Artists associated with Lund include DJ and record producer Axwell, rock musician Kal P. Dal, rapper Timbuktu, indie pop group The Radio Dept., and singer and songwriter Amanda Jenssen. The music venue Olympen, hosted many famous artists from 1971 to 2009.

The Sparbanken Skåne Arena is a large sports hall adjoining the city park in Lund. Until 2014 it was known as the Färs och Frosta Sparbank Arena.

Lund's handball team, LUGI HF plays in both the men's and women's top leagues. Lund hosted matches from the 2011 Handball World Championship in the Sparbanken Skåne Arena.[56] Lund has a chess team, Lunds ASK, that for decades has been among the top teams in Sweden. Lund has two Division 1 football clubs, Torns IF and Lunds BK. It is also the birthplace of the online football manager game Hattrick. Lugi Rugbyklubb, based in Lund, is one of Sweden's few rugby clubs. Lund has a boxing association called Lunds Boxningssällskap. [57]

Lund railway station

Lund is a railway junction and is well served by rail traffic. The main railway station, Lund Central, is Sweden's third busiest railway station, with around 37 000 passengers per day as of 2013.[58] Another, smaller station serves the suburb of Gunnesbo in the north-west of the city. Lund has been on the Southern Main Line, which connects Malmö and Stockholm, since it opened in 1856. The West Coast Line to Gothenburg branches off the Southern Main Line just north of Lund Central station. Thus there are direct services to all of Sweden's three largest cities, as well as to Copenhagen and Helsingør via the Öresund Bridge. Rail services to Denmark, and within Scania and neighbouring counties, are mainly provided by the Øresundståg. These trains are operated jointly by Skånetrafiken in Scania and the Danish State Railways in Denmark. Longer distance services, notably to Stockholm, are provided by SJ. Local traffic is served by the Pågatåg electric multiple units, which provide stopping services within Scania.

Lund has been praised for its cycling infrastructure.[59] There are 4,800 bike parking spaces in the town, including a multi-storey facility at the railway station, over 260 km (162 mi) of cyclepaths and cycle lanes, and 43% of journeys within the city take place by bicycle.[60] There has been no increase in car usage for the past 10 years.

Since 2019, the bus network in Lund has been licensed to the company Vy Buss, overseen by Skånetrafiken.[61] They operate green-coloured buses which, for environmental reasons, are powered by compressed natural gas.[62] The busses run on a total of seven bus lines.[63] A survey carried out on behalf of Region Skåne in 2015 found that 11% of Lund residents used the bus network regularly.[64]

A tram on Lund's tramway.

Plans to initiate a nearly 6 km (3.7 mi) tram network to achieve faster and higher-capacity public transport between Lund Central Station and many of the largest work-places in the city were approved in 2015.[65][66] The entire construction now stands finished and the tram line is slated to thrown open to the public on December 13, 2020.[67] The 15-minute tram ride connects Lund Central Station with the hospital, Lund University (LTH), Ideon Science Park, the new upcoming district of Brunnshög, the MAX IV synchrotron light source, and, the European Spallation Source. Long-term plans to extend this network to the suburban towns of Bjärred (via Öresundsvägen), Dalby, Staffanstorp and Södra Sandby have been shelved.

Lund has been connected to the motorway network since 1953 when the E22 was opened between Lund and Malmö. The E22 was the first motorway in Sweden, and was originally built around the edge of the town; however following the expansion of the suburbs out to the east in the latter half of the 20th century it now passes through the city. The E22 forms the main north-south trunk route through Lund. The largest east-west road is the multi-lane northern ring road which also passes through the city limits. There are also other connections to most major roads in the area, for example the E6 via Riksväg 16, and the Länsväg 108 which connects to the E65.

Lund is served by Copenhagen Airport, the largest airport in the Nordic countries, which can be reached by frequent direct trains in about 35 minutes. The second airport in the area, Malmö Airport, is located about 26 kilometres (16 miles) away and is mainly used for domestic flights. There also used to be a very small airstrip, Hasslanda Flygfält, to the south of Lund, mainly used for private and charter flights. The airstrip closed in 2008.