Lund, Sweden Summary

Just forty minutes south of Helsingborg and fifteen minutes from Malmö, LUND is the most obvious target for a trip, a beautiful university town with a picturesque medieval centre and a unique buzz thanks to the student population. This does mean, though, that the life drains out of the place during the summer when the students are on vacation. Its weather-beaten Domkyrkan (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat 9.30am-5pm, Sun 9.30am-6pm), consecrated in 1145, is considered by many to be Scandinavia’s finest medieval building. Its plain interior culminates in a delicate, semicircular apse with a gleaming fifteenth-century altarpiece and a mosaic of Christ surrounded by angels – although what draws most attention is a fourteenth-century astronomical clock, revealing an ecclesiastical Punch and Judy show daily at noon and 3pm. Below the apse is a crypt, supported by vividly sculpted pillars and littered with elaborately carved tombstones.