Where to Stay in Eskilstuna, Södermanland County

Steel made this city famous. Eskilstuna built its name on metalwork, the forges and factories that turned it into the smithy of Sweden and earned it a reputation for knives, tools, and fine steel known across the country. The old Rademachersmedjorna, a street of preserved seventeenth-century forge cabins, keeps that craft alive for visitors.

Industry still hums here. The river running through the centre, the engineering heritage of Munktell, and a lively zoo round out the draw.

Rademachersmedjorna is the city's signature sight, a row of preserved timber forge cabins from the seventeenth century where smiths still demonstrate the old craft. Nearby the Eskilstuna konstmuseum shows art beside the river, and the engineering past lives on at the Munktellmuseet, devoted to the tractors and machines once built here. Klosters kyrka and Fors kyrka anchor the older parishes with their brick and stone.

Parken Zoo draws families to the western edge. The river ties it all together.

The city takes its name from a saint. Eskil, an English missionary bishop martyred in the region, gave his name to the early settlement that grew around a monastery on the river, and a medieval Johannite priory once stood where the town later rose. For centuries this was a modest river crossing between two great lakes, a place of church, mill, and market on the road through Södermanland.

Metal changed everything. In the mid-seventeenth century the German smith Reinhold Rademacher was brought here to found a forge colony, and his workshops planted the smithing craft that would define the city for generations. A free town for metalworkers grew alongside, drawing smiths and giving Eskilstuna its lasting character as a centre of steel.

The forges multiplied. Through the industrial age the city became famous for knives, tools, locks, and fine cutlery sent across Sweden and beyond. Heavy engineering followed the smiths.

The Munktell works built tractors and machinery that carried the city into the modern industrial era, and waves of workers arrived to fill the factories, among them a large Sweden Finn community that shaped the city's culture. Old forge and modern factory together left Eskilstuna a working town proud of its hands, its history bound up with iron, steel, and the river that powered it all.

Eskilstuna lies in the north-western part of Södermanland County, west of Stockholm. The Eskilstunaån runs through the heart of the city, the short river that carries water from Lake Hjälmaren north into Lake Mälaren and once powered the forges along its banks. Gentle country surrounds the town, a land of farm fields, low wooded ridges, and lake shores typical of the Mälaren basin.

This river splits the centre in two. Green parks and walks follow the water through town toward the bays of Mälaren in the north.

Eskilstuna has a temperate inland climate. Its position in the Mälaren basin brings fairly mild, settled weather by Swedish standards, with warm summers that fill the riverbanks and parks with people. Winters bring snow and frost.

The nearby lakes moderate the seasons a little, easing both the summer heat and the deep winter cold that grips the interior. Rain falls across the year, heaviest in the late summer months. Spring comes at a steady pace, melting the river ice before the lakeside woods turn fully green.

Eskilstuna is easy to reach. The city sits on the Svealand Line, with frequent trains linking it to Stockholm in around an hour and onward toward Örebro and the west, and the station drops you a short walk from the centre. Drivers reach the city on the E20, which runs past between the capital and Göteborg.

Stockholm's airports lie within driving range to the east. Local and regional buses connect the centre with the surrounding towns and the lakeside districts.