House of Nobility

This guide to the House of Nobility in Stockholm reads the roughly 2,300 copper coats of arms crowding its Knights Hall walls, each one a family's paid-for place among Sweden's ruling class since the hall was built in the 1640s. It follows how the tradition still works today, with thousands of noblemen paying an annual fee to keep an ancestor's plate on the wall. Look closely at one small copper plate, no bigger than a dinner plate, while you listen.