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Almgrens Sidenväveri Museum
Knut August Almgren founded this historic weaving factory in 1883 after posing as a Frenchman in order to learn, and steal, the carefully guarded craft.) Now an adorable working museum, you can watch the weavers work the original Jacquard looms between and Mon to Thu, learn about Sweden's silk weaving history and swoon over shimmering fabrics. The museum shop is Stockholm's best bet for hand-woven products.
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Arkitekturmuseet
Attached to the Moderna Museet and housed in an ex-military drill hall, the Museum of Architecture's permanent exhibition covers 1000 years of Swedish architecture (from cabins to the contemporary) and boasts an archive of 2.5 million documents, photographs, plans, drawings and models. There's a seasonal program of temporary exhibitions, and the museum hosts occasional seminars on everything from urban planning to future design.
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Armémuseum
Take a walk on the dark side of human nature at the Royal Army Museum, where three levels of engrossing exhibitions explore the horrors of war through art, weaponry and life-size reconstructions of charging horsemen, forlorn barracks and starving civilians. For a taste of medieval torture, hop on the replica 'sawhorse'.
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Bonniers Konsthall
This ambitious gallery keeps culture-fiends busy with a fresh dose of international contemporary art as well as a reading room, a fab café and a busy diary of art seminars and artists-in-conversation sessions. The transparent clothes-iron-shaped building is the work of Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor.
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Brändström & Stene
Tucked away in an anonymous industrial block, this is one of Stockholm's best private art galleries. It's famed for its intuitive sense for the next big thing, and past exhibitors have included Olafur Eliasson, Clay Ketter, Jan Håfström and Jeppe Hein. A paint flick away is Natalia Goldin Gallery (650 21 35; www.nataliagoldin.com; Hudiksvallsgatan 8), another pioneering art space best known for spotlighting hot new talent.
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Dansmuseet
The small yet sassy Dance Museum focuses on the intersections between dance, art and theatre. Collection highlights include vivid traditional dance masks from Africa, India and Tibet, avant-garde costumes from the Russian ballet, Chinese and Japanese theatre puppets and one of the world's finest collections of early-20th-century Ballets Ruses costumes.
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Folkens Museum Etnografiska
Next door to the Tekniska Museet, the National Museum of Ethnography focuses on non-European cultures. Highly original temporary exhibitions (ranging from Amazon photography to the macabre etchings of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada) complement permanent collection highlights like Mali crocodile masks, Mongolian temple tents and a Japanese teahouse. An in-house restaurant serves up Afro-Asian dishes, smooth mango lassis and homemade chai.
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Fotografins Hus
This one-time mine factory is now one of Stockholm's best sites for photographic art. Decked out in furniture designed by Konstfack graduates, its six annual exhibitions showcase local and international talent, with past exhibitors including Hasselbald prize-winner David Goldblatt, Susan Heiselas and J H Engström, Sweden's Wolfgang Tillmans. You'll find their signatures on the foyer wall, behind which awaits a cosy little café.
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Galleri Loyal
Fans of this hip art spot are called Loyalists and there seems to be a lot of them, including music-video director Johan Renck (Madonna's Hung Up , Robbie Williams' Tripping , et al). We suspect it might be due to the post-pop artwork, which focus heavily on hot New York talent with a dash of UK and homegrown cool.
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Gustaf Vasa Kyrkan
This saintly show-off flaunts a white Italian neo-baroque exterior and 60m-high cupola adorned with dreamy New Testament frescoes by Vicke Andrén. Opened in 1906, its star attraction is Burchardt Precht's 18th-century marble altarpiece, considered Sweden's largest baroque sculpture. The creepy columbarium crypt (32 49 20) has places for around 35,000 burial urns; enter from the Västmannagatan side of the church.
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Hallwylska Museet
Completed in 1898, Hallwylska Museet was once a private palace. Wilhelmina von Hallwyl collected items as diverse as kitchen utensils, Chinese pottery, 17th-century paintings, silverware, sculpture and jewellery. In 1920, she and her husband donated their entire house (including contents) to the nation.
For in-depth voyeurism, join the one-hour guided tour.
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Historiska Museet
From Iron Age ice-skates to Renaissance triptychs, Sweden's prime historical collection spans nearly 14,000 years of Swedish history and culture. The undisputed highlight is the subterranean Gold Room, a brooding chamber gleaming with Viking bling and rare historical jewels. It includes a 5th-century gold collar with 458 carved figures weighing 823g. To use the museum's fantastic free digital audio guides, bring some ID.
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Judiska Museet
Expanding Swedish history beyond Vasa and Vikings, this kosher little museum explores Swedish Jewry since 1774. Nifty pull-out display cabinets cover everything from the Holocaust and Raoul Wallenberg (a Swedish Oscar Schindler of sorts) to Torah silverware, ceremonial Passover items, wince-inducing circumcision knives, and a seven-branched candle-holder looted from Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. The temporary exhibitions are often brilliant.
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Kulturhuset
Culture House is the city's communal lounge room, packed with theatres (including Stockholms Stadsteater), free art galleries, a comic-book library, a chess-playing corner and even a crafts lounge where teens can hang out, drink coffee and express themselves with art supplies and sewing machines. You'll find design shops and internet access in the basement. A brilliant café/restaurant on the 5th floor has great views and a sunny summer terrace.
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Kungliga Myntkabinettet
Anything but a dreary accountant's fantasy, the fabulous Royal Coin Cabinet sparkles with a priceless collection of world-turning currency, including Viking silver, the world's oldest coin (created in Greece in BC 625), as well as its heaviest (a copper plate weighing 19.7kg). The exhibitions are innovative, the kids' playroom is fun and the kitsch collection of piggybanks is worth the trip alone.
Information and floor plans are available in English and there's also a cafe and souvenir shop.
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Kungliga Slottet
Built on the ruins of the original Tre Kronor royal fortress, this mammoth 18th-century palace boasts 608 rooms and three museums: the blingy Skattkammaren, the archeologically inclined Museum Tre Kronor and the hit-and-miss Gustav III's Antikmuseum. Upstaging them all are the lavish Royal Apartments, dripping in rococo excess and home to the decadent Karl XI Gallery, inspired by Versailles' Hall of Mirrors and considered the finest example of Swedish Late Baroque.
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Livrustkammaren
Quite frankly, the Royal Armoury Museum is brilliant. A regal storage attic of sorts, its engrossing collection of booty spans over 500 years of royal childhoods, coronations, weddings and murders. Sneak a peek at lavish royal wardrobes, King Gustav III's masquerade costume (worn when shot in 1792) and the preserved stomach contents of Baron Bielke, one the conspirators to the king's assassination.
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Magasin 3
Aptly set in a gritty dockside warehouse, Magasin 3 is one of Stockholm's bratpack galleries. Its six to eight annual shows of contemporary art often feature specially commissioned, site-specific work from names like Siobhán Hapaska, James Turrell, Ronald Jones, Katharina Grosse and provocative American artist Paul McCarthy.
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Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet turns the big 5-0 in 2008 and museum director Lars Nittve is bumping up the booty to celebrate. Check out new stuff like photographer Tova Mozard's David Lynch-esque photography, as well as 20th-century classics like the buxom outdoor sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle.
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National Museum
Sweden's largest art museum heaves with painting, sculpture, drawings, decorative arts and graphics from the Middle-Ages through to the present. While there's no lack of continental bigwigs here, from Cézanne to Watteau, come for the Scandi stuff, which includes works by CG Pilo, Anders Zorn and Carl Larsson, whose commissioned staircase fresco, Midwinter Sacrifice, was originally rejected by the museum. Style buffs shouldn't miss the Design 19002000 exhibition.
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Nobelmuseet
More about ideas and inspiration than artefacts, the minimalist Nobelmuseet features some fascinating short films on 'creativity', an audio archive of acceptance speeches, interviews with and readings from laureates like Martin Luther King and Ernest Hemingway, and café chairs signed by the visiting prize winners (turn them over to see!). To get the most out of the museum, join a free guided tour.
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Nordiska Museet
With its flouncy turrets and neo-Swedish Renaissance looks, Isak Gustav Clason's iconic building is hard to miss. Step inside for a sprawling collection of all things Swedish, from Sami folklore to eclectic exhibitions of Swedish fashion, shoes, interiors and even table settings. The museum owns the largest collection of paintings by August Strindberg and the audio tours ( Sk20 ) of the collection and building are nothing short of satisfying.
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Östasiatiska Museet
Know your Buddha from your bodhisattvas at Stockholm's Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, famed for its world-class booty of ancient Eastern art, stoneware and porcelain. Particularly noteworthy is the collection of wares from the Chinese dynasties of Song, Ming and Qing, as well as the museum's fresh temporary shows, which cover anything from comic-book manga to the art of Japanese tattoos.
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Postmuseum
While a museum dedicated to almost four centuries of Swedish postal history sounds positively mind-numbing, Stockholm's Post Museum is surprisingly engrossing, crammed with old mail carriages, a climb-aboard train carriage, offbeat postcards and a cute children's post office downstairs for budding postal workers. Previous temporary exhibitions have covered everything from the life of the Great Garbo to the kiss in art.
And, of course, you can mail letters, send packages and buy stamps here.
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Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde
Dubbed 'the painter prince', Prins Eugens (1865-1947) once lived at this waterside villa. The property now houses the late prince's superlative collection of Nordic art, including works by Anders Zorn, Carl Larsson and Isaac Grünewald, as well as landscape paintings by the reclusive royal himself. The terraced garden boasts sculptures by Carl Milles and Auguste Rodin, sublimely matched by cool water-views and an 18th-century windmill.
The villa was designed by Ferdinand Boberg, creator of the NK department store.
