The Obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

 at Slottsbacken

Slottsbacken

Slottsbacken is a street in Gamla stan, the old town in central Stockholm, Sweden.It stretches east from the Stockholm Cathedral and the Royal Palace down to the street Skeppsbron which passes along the eastern waterfront of the old town...

adjacent to the southern entrances of the Royal Palace

Stockholm Palace

The Stockholm Palace is the official residence and major royal palace of the Swedish monarch. . Stockholm Palace is located on Stadsholmen , in Gamla Stan in the capital, Stockholm...

 in Stockholm Old Town

Gamla stan

Gamla stan , until 1980 officially Staden mellan broarna , is the old town of Stockholm, Sweden. Gamla stan consists primarily of the island Stadsholmen. The surrounding islets Riddarholmen, Helgeandsholmen, and Strömsborg are officially part of, but not colloquially included in, Gamla stan...

 is considered to be the very centre point of the Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 capital Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

.

The granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 Obelisk is 22 m high, including the pedestal

Pedestal

Pedestal is a term generally applied to the support of a statue or a vase....

 of 5 m. From the Obelisk all street numbers in Stockholm have their common origin - there are only a handful of exceptions, only some small streets originating from the street Birger Jarlsgatan

Birger Jarlsgatan

Birger Jarlsgatan is one of the longest streets in central Stockholm, Sweden. The street forms the border between Östermalm and the two neighbouring districts Norrmalm and Vasastaden....

.

The neo-Egyptian

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 design of the obelisk was made by the artist Louis Jean Desprez

Louis Jean Desprez

Louis Jean Desprez ca 1743–18 March 1804 was a French painter and architect who worked in Sweden during the last twenty years of his life....

 and it was erected by the inventor and colonel-mecanicus Jonas Lidströmer

Jonas Lidströmer

Jonas Lidströmer was a Swedish inventor and officer in the Swedish navy.Lidströmer was born in 1755 at Lagfors bruk, Medelpad, and died 1808 in Stockholm...

 in 1800. The construction was at the time considered to be complicated, since the Stockholm Obelisk is made of many and heavy stone boulders, and not as sometimes in the antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 cut in one piece.

The Obelisk was commissioned by King Gustav III

Gustav III of Sweden

Gustav III was King of Sweden from 1771 until his death. He was the eldest son of King Adolph Frederick and Queen Louise Ulrica of Sweden, she a sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia....

 to show his gratitude to the burghers

Bourgeoisie

In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...

 of Stockholm who guarded the city while the king was leading the Swedish-Finnish Navy in the Russian War in 1788-1790.

See also

• List of streets and squares in Gamla stan
• History of Stockholm
  History of Stockholm
  The history of Stockholm, capital of Sweden, for many centuries coincided with the development of what is today known as Gamla stan, the Stockholm Old Town...