Museum Gustavianum

Across from the cathedral stands the best of this university city's museums and Uppsala University's oldest preserved building. It even houses one of only seven ancient anatomical theaters in the world to get by on natural light. Gruesome public dissections that took place in the 1663 theater were lit by a sun-crested cupola, one of Uppsala's distinctive landmarks. The museum has a number of other attractions, none more attention-grabbing than the Augsburg Cabinet of Curiosities, a gift to King Gustav II Adolf from the German city of Augsburg in 1632. It is an ebony cabinet encrusted with gemstones and filled with drawers and "pigeonholes" in which the king placed his precious objects (though someone moved them long ago). The museum also includes archaeological exhibitions, from Swedish prehistory to the Middle Ages. Some of the rarer pieces are from the Mediterranean and the Nile Valley, including the sarcophagus of Khonsumes, a priest from the 21st dynasty. In the historical exhibition on the ground floor, you can see everything from student lecture notes from the first term in 1477 -- the year the university was founded -- to photographs and historical artifacts showing the development of the institution over the years as a seat of learning.

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