Where to Stay in Motala, Östergötland County

Motala is the capital of the Göta Canal. The great waterway meets Lake Vättern here, climbing through a chain of locks designed in the early nineteenth century by Baltzar von Platen, who lies buried beside the canal he built. It also gave Sweden a voice.

For decades the Motala longwave transmitter carried national radio across the country, and visitors still come for the lakeside marina, the canal harbour, and the Motala Motormuseum with its hall of vintage cars.

The Göta Canal is the great sight, climbing from Lake Vättern through its flight of locks at Borenshult and threading the heart of town past the old canal harbour. Motala kyrka stands above the centre, the round neoclassical church that anchors the streets. A wide blue lake spreads west.

The tall mast of the Motala longwave transmitter once beamed radio across Sweden, while the Motala Motormuseum gathers vintage cars and the everyday objects of the past century, and the parish churches of Charlottenborgskyrkan, Lillkyrkan, and Råssnäskyrkan serve the wider town. The LMT Arena draws crowds to its rink and hall.

Motala was chartered in the thirteenth century. The old village stood where the Motala ström flows out of Lake Vättern, a meeting of water and road on the route across the Östgöta plain, and for centuries it remained a small place of farms, fishing, and a parish church on the great lake. Trade moved through it slowly.

The lakeshore gave the settlement its living long before the modern age remade it. The canal made the modern town. When Baltzar von Platen drove the Göta Canal through to Lake Vättern in the early nineteenth century, Motala became its key station, with workshops, an engineering industry, and a planned grid of streets laid out beside the new waterway that he himself helped design.

Industry and radio followed. The town grew into a centre of mechanical works, and in the twentieth century its great longwave transmitter carried Swedish national radio across the land, fixing the name Motala in the ear of the whole country and shaping the lakeside town that now serves as the seat of its municipality.

Motala lies in the north-western part of Östergötland County, on the eastern shore of Lake Vättern where the Motala ström leaves the great lake and runs east across the Östgöta plain. The town spreads along the waterfront and the Göta Canal, with the wide blue lake to the west, low farmland and forest rising inland to the east, and the locks and harbour stitching the water through the centre. The setting is open and lakeside.

Roads and the railway tie Motala to Linköping and Norrköping in the east and to the towns of the wider county around.

Motala has a temperate climate softened by Lake Vättern. Winters are cold and often snowy, yet the huge body of the lake holds back the deepest chill and slows the freeze along the shore, so the waterfront stays milder than the open plain inland through the dark half of the year. Summers are warm and bright.

The long days draw bathers and boaters to the lake and the canal, and the warmest, sunniest weeks fall across high summer when the harbour is at its busiest. Wind off the open water is common all year.

Motala sits on the railway across Östergötland, with trains stopping through the day on the line between Stockholm and the west. Cars come by road. Drivers reach it on the main road along the lake and across the broad farmland of the plain.

In summer the Göta Canal itself brings cruisers and pleasure boats to the harbour. The nearest large airport lies near Linköping to the east, which serves as the main air gateway, while regular road and rail services tie Motala to Linköping, Norrköping, and the wider county around.