Vita bergen, Stockholm

Vita bergen is a hilly park on Södermalm, and its landscape carries an unexpected secret beneath it. The former civil-defence centre Pionen lies under the park; since 2007, the hardened shelter has operated as a data hall with Stockholm’s largest server park. The park also has two summits: Sofia Church occupies the north-western one, while a music pavilion stands on the south-eastern one.

Its name means “The White Mountains,” a reference to the pale rock of terrain that was once bare. August Strindberg placed Ygberg, a character in The Red Room, here as a resident. Among the preserved workers’ homes around the edges, Mäster Pers gränd includes an eighteenth-century cottage that had no water, electricity or sewage until its renovation in 2011–2012.