Fåfängan, Stockholm

Fåfängan is a lookout with a restaurant and café on a hill near Danviken, at Södermalm’s eastern edge. Trimmed lime trees frame the site and make it a distinctive feature in Stockholm’s landscape. The name comes from merchant Fredrik Lundin’s pleasure house, built here in the 1770s after he acquired much of the hill.

In 1774, he created the garden and terrace walls, reusing stone from an earlier fortification. That military past reaches back to the mid-1600s, when Danviks skans guarded Stockholm’s inlet together with the fortification at Djurgården. Look toward the summit: when the restaurant is open, four flags are raised there. The place’s most unexpected detail is beneath the hill: a railway tunnel about 200 metres long runs under Fåfängan.