Skytteanum, Akademikvarnen, Flustret. Photo: Kalbar/Uppsala Tourism

1. Trädgårdsgatan 12. This is the house where Ingmar Bergman spent the first days of his life and a great deal of his childhood. Bergman’s father, Erik, came to Uppsala in 1907 to study theology. That same year, the Åkerblom family moved into this house, which was built in 1888. The daughter in the family, Karin Åkerblom, became Ingmar Bergman’s mother. The Åkerbloms were a wealthy family who owned the entire building and occupied a 10-room apartment on the second floor. It was in this apartment that Bergman’s parents first met, in October, 1907. Their son Ingmar was born in 1917.

On a return visit to Uppsala in 1956, Bergman visited the house on Trädgårdsgatan, which gave him the inspiration for the movie “Wild Strawberries.” Like many other places in Uppsala, the house appears in the movies “Fanny and Alexander” and “Good Intentions,” as well as in the early Bergman plays, “The City” and “Unto My Fear.”

When Bergman’s grandmother died in 1934, the house was sold. Over the years, the building has been used for classrooms and an office, among other things, but now it is an apartment house again.

2. Flustret. Continue south on Trädgårdsgatan and you will come to the “swan pond” and Flustret restaurant, which is one of Uppsala’s oldest. The word flustret means “entrance to the beehive,” which is a name students gave to it, because of people’s tendency to flock around it like bees. First built in 1842, Flustret got the appearance it has today in 1872, when the turrets were added. The establishment was destroyed by fire in 1984, but it was rebuilt to look like the original.

The Flustret restaurant appears in many scenes in “Good Intentions,” for instance, when Henrik—Bergman’s father in the movie—and his future brother-in-law eat dinner there. This is also where Frida worked, the waitress who was secretly engaged to Henrik before he met Anna (Bergman’s mother in the movie).


3. City Garden. Behind the Flustret restaurant, you will find the City Garden, whose northern section was used for growing hops by Swedish kings as early as the 16th century. In the mid-19th century, the then county governor introduced new green surfaces in and around Uppsala, also planting maple and elm trees along the Fyrisån River. In the early 20th century, significant changes were made in the city garden area, in accordance with an entirely new city plan. This effort eventually created the popular place for walking and enjoying nature that the City Garden is today.

Ingmar Bergman and his siblings often played in the City Garden. In the movie “Good Intentions,” the last scene shows Bergman’s parents meeting exactly here, just a week before Ingmar made his entrance into the world.


4. Akademiska University Hospital. Beyond the trees, on the other side of the street from the City Garden, is University Hospital, called Akademiska in Swedish. The history of the hospital dates back to 1708, when a small cottage hospital was established near Uppsala Cathedral.

It was here at Akademiska Hospital, on July 14, 1918, that Ingmar Bergman was born. Since he appeared frail and undernourished, he was given an emergency baptism by his father while still at the hospital. As children, both Ingmar and his younger brother Dag were relatively sickly. When one of the brothers showed signs of a new illness, the other brother was sent away from their home in Stockholm to their grandmother on Trädgårdsgatan, to avoid being infected. This is why Ingmar came to spend a great deal of his childhood at his grandmother’s house in Uppsala.


5. The Slotts Cinema. Go along Nedre Slottsgatan to the north and you will come to Slottsbiografen, the Slotts Cinema. Opened in 1914, silent movies were shown here up until 1929, when the first “talkie” arrived. Careful renovation of the cinema was undertaken in 1993–96, paving the way to what is now one of Sweden’s best preserved movie houses from the early 20th century. It was to this cinema that Bergman’s grandmother took the young Ingmar and it was here that he first sat with the projectionist and felt the magical wonder of the world of moving pictures.


6. Uppsala Cathedral. Continue up the hill to Uppsala Cathedral, which is Scandinavia’s largest in Gothic style. Construction of the church is believed to have begun as far back as 1270. Consecrated in 1435, the cathedral has seen many changes over the course of history, including having burned down and undergoing reconstruction several times. The plan of the interior and the span of the church, however, have remained the same. The steeples are 118 meters high and the building itself is of the same length.

Uppsala Cathedral has played many rolls in Ingmar Bergman’s life and work. His father was ordained here in 1912 and here his parents were married on September 19, 1913. The marriage scene is included in ”Good Intentions,” as is the funeral procession in “Fanny and Alexander.” In the television drama “The Blessed Ones,” the main characters meet on the square in front of the cathedral. The bells in the cathedral, which ring every quarter of an hour, are also heard in many of Bergman’s movies and theatre productions, indicating the time of day.


7. St. Erik’s Square. Going down the incline beside the cathedral, you will come to St. Erik Square, known in Swedish as S:t Eriks torg. Along one edge of the square is a row of buildings that once belonged to a circle of structures surrounding the cathedral in the Middle Ages. The building with the three Romanesque arches is known as the Consistory, which is where prospective students did their best to pass the oral entrance exam to the university. Today, the Cathedral Café lies here.

In the film “Fanny and Alexander,” the three doorways make up the entrance to the theatre where the children’s father is the director. The winter scenes in the movie were also shot on St. Erik’s Square, during the snowy winter of 1980-81.


8. Academy Mill. Next to the Fyrisån River, you will find the Uppland Museum (Upplandsmuseet), originally a watermill known as Academy Mill, whose history dates back all the way to 1286. The watermill of stone was built in 1776-78, with a steam engine installed in 1888. During the 1950s, the mill was restored as a museum.

Ingmar Bergman used the mill building as the site for the home of the bishop in “Fanny och Alexander.” This is where the bishop lived with his unmarried sister and where Fanny and Alexander moved in with their mother after the death of their father and the mother’s remarriage to the bishop. Many intense scenes take place in the bishop’s residence, including the death of the bishop in a dramatic fire towards the end of the movie. Both the mill’s exterior and the river flowing alongside it are used in the film.


9. St. Erik Lane. To the south of the square is St. Erik Lane (Swedish: S:t Eriks gränd), a setting used in both “Fanny and Alexander” and “Good Intentions.” In the latter movie, we see Anna on her way to meet Henrik’s first fiancée Frida, the waitress at the Flustret restaurant.


10. Cathedral Bridge. Going south from St. Erik Lane, you will come to Fyris Square (Swedish: Fyristorg). The bridge over the river is called Cathedral Bridge (Swedish: Dombron). This is the site of Uppsala’s first bridge over the Fyrisån River, from the 14th century. Today’s bridge was built in 1760; the name refers to its location near the cathedral.

The bridge occurs in several scenes in the two movies, “Fanny and Alexander” and “Good Intentions.” In the former, several sets of horses and carriages or horses and sleighs are seen rumbling over the bridge. In the latter, Henrik meets a friend on Cathedral Bridge and is invited to dinner at his house, where he first meets the friend’s sister Anna, his future wife.


11. Fyris Square. As early as the 14th century, there was a church, a poorhouse (often a sanitorium), and a hospital on Fyris Square (Swedish: Fyristorg). Many of the buildings that once stood here were destroyed in the big fire of 1702. As they were never built up again, the place was left open. Today, the square consists of parking spaces and a popular open air market for local producers is held here on the weekends.

At the square is an impressive stone building that was once a famous restaurant and hotel called “Gillet.” On September 19, 1913, Bergman’s parents held their wedding reception here. Today, there are offices and shops in the building.

Scenes from the square are included in both “Fanny and Alexander” and “Good Intentions.” In a documentary about the making of the movie “Fanny and Alexander,” we see Bergman standing on the square, with mock signs on the shops nearby looking like the signs from decades earlier.


12. Valvgatan. From the western side of Fyris Square, a street called Valvgatan goes through the building known as Skytteanum. The building’s gables are from the late 13th century, when it was part of the ring of brick houses surrounding Uppsala Cathedral. In the 1620s, renovations were initiated by Johan Skytte, tutor to King Gustav II Adolf. It is from Skytte that the building got its name. The letters “H J S F R F M N T G” on the side of the building stand for Skytte and his titles and the name and ancestry of his wife. Skytte donated the building to Uppsala University, which now uses it as a residence for professors of political science.

In the Bergman movie “Fanny and Alexander,” Valvgatan is the street that goes between the children’s first home and the bishop’s residence. In a way, this reflects Bergman’s own experience, since his grandmother lived on Trädgårdsgatan and they would pass Valvgatan on their way to the movie houses on the eastern side of the river. In the movie “Good Intentions” as well, the main characters walk and bicycle through the archway.


13. Cathedral Stairway Building. Along Valvgatan, you will find the cathedral stairway building (Domtrapphuset), which contains remains of a tower from the 13th century, when the structure made up part of the defense wall surrounding the cathedral. Over the centuries, the stairway building has been used as housing for clergymen, a hospital, and the departments of Semitic Languages and the History of Religion.

In “Fanny and Alexander,” the children’s grandmother has a friend named Isak, who lives in the stairway building. Isak is the man who saves the children from the bishop and his house during a dramatic escape.