thumb|300px|Sergels torg viewed from [[Malmskillnadsgatan with Kulturhuset and Stockholm City Theatre (to the left) at night]]
Sergels torg ("Sergel's Square") is a major public square in Stockholm, Sweden, constructed in the 1960s and named after 18th-century sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel, whose workshop was once located north of the square.
Overview
Sergels torg has a dominant west-to-east axis and is divided into three distinct parts:
- A sunken pedestrian plaza furnished with a triangular-colored floor pattern (colloquially referred to as Plattan, "The Slab") and a wide flight of stairs leading up to the pedestrian street Drottninggatan, connecting south to Stockholm Old Town and north to Kungsgatan. The triangular pattern of the square is featured on the seats of C30 and refurbished C20 trains of the Stockholm metro.
- This plaza is partly overbuilt by a roundabout centered on a glass obelisk and by the concrete decks of three major streets.
- North of this traffic junction is a considerably smaller open space overlooked by the high-rise façade of the fifth Hötorget Building from where the avenue Sveavägen extends north.
The site south of the square is taken up by the cultural centre Kulturhuset, which also harbours the Stockholm City Theatre and hides the Bank of Sweden headquarters facing the square Brunkebergstorg behind. The street Klarabergsgatan leads west past the department store Åhléns City and Klara Church to the Klaraberg Viaduct and Kungsholmen. Hamngatan leads east under Malmskillnadsgatan to Kungsträdgården, Norrmalmstorg, and Strandvägen. Together with the underground mall east of the pedestrian plaza and the T-Centralen metro station and other continuous underpasses west thereof, Sergels torg forms part of a continuous underground structure almost a kilometre in length.
thumb|A May Day demonstration
thumb|The Stockholm Kulturfestival (2011)
Since its creation, Sergels torg has been much criticized for giving priority to cars at the cost of pedestrians. It has, among some quarters, become the main target for criticism of the much debated demolition of the central city district of Klara during the 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, it is not dissimilar to but larger than the public space in front of Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and much like its French counterpart remains the most popular space in Stockholm for meeting friends, for political demonstrations, for a wide range of events, and for drug-dealers. This includes the fountain, in which people celebrate major victories by Swedish sports teams.
History
thumb|left|Crystal – vertical accent in glass and steel, by [[Edvin Öhrström]]
The construction of the square was completed in 1967. Before the creation of Sergels torg, Brunkebergstorg was the most important public space in the area, the hub about which traffic revolved, the place where people would go to work and to find entertainment.
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Early proposals
Albert Lilienberg was appointed city-planning superintendent in 1927, and a year later he produced the first proposal for a public square on the location in his general plan of 1928. In his proposal he envisioned a square whose north-south oriented axis would line-up with Sveavägen intended to be extended south across the square down to the waterfront with widened Hamngatan and Klarabergsgatan joining in from west and east. After this first proposal, the square is featured on every subsequent city plan produced for the area, with alternations in width and length. Notwithstanding the considerable number of revised proposals produced, surprisingly few were preoccupied by architectonic considerations, instead focusing on optimization of traffic flow. Before presenting his final proposal in 1960, Helldén added the triangular pattern to the pedestrian plaza and the wide stairs on its western side.