Mariatorget

This guide to Mariatorget in Stockholm turns on a 1952 planning order that marked the eighteenth-century hillside neighborhood above the square for demolition, the same fate that erased whole quarters across the water in Norrmalm. It follows the preservation group Foreningen Sodermalm and novelist Per Anders Fogelstrom as they pushed back, with Stockholm's city museum weighing in. Look up the slope behind the square at the crooked wooden houses with towers and gables while you listen.