Uppsala University Main Building
Uppsala University Main Building
The conference takes place at the Uppsala University Main Building at the crossroads of S:t Olofsgatan and Övre Slottsgatan.(“Universitetshuset” in Swedish). The conference venue is just a few minutes walk from the city centre.
Download a Map of Uppsala (pdf-file).
The University Main Building is situated in the centre of the town, close to the cathedral. It was built in the 1880s. Parliament had allocated funding, and King Oscar II laid the cornerstone in pouring rain on a spring day in 1879. The site was formerly occupied by a large academic riding building, which was torn down for the new edifice. On May 17, 1887 the building was inaugurated at a festive ceremony. The architect was Herman Teodor Holmgren.
What he created was a grand and stately structure in a sort of Romanesque Renaissance style. The strange thing is that, despite much modernizing and functional changes, we still experience largely the same building that visitors encountered in the 1880s. Its magnificent and spacious foyer with its light cupolas and the Grand Auditorium or Ceremonial Hall (generally called the ‘Aula’), which seats about 1800, gives us a good idea of the best of 19th-century Swedish architecture. Above the entrance to the Aula we read the often-quoted words of the 18th-century philosopher Thomas Thorild: “It is a great thing to think freely, but it is greater still to think correctly.”