Chokladkoppen

Take a seat by the window, or outside in summer, and you have one of the best views in Gamla Stan. Chokladkoppen sits at Stortorget 18. Right next door, number 20 is the tall red house with the stepped gable, and together they are probably the most photographed façades in the old town. Across the cobbles stands the long, pale Stock Exchange building, Börshuset, home to the Nobel Prize Museum and the Swedish Academy.

The square looks gentle now, but its best known date is a dark one. Over three days in November 1520, the Danish union king Christian II had around ninety people executed here, many of them nobles who had opposed him. Sweden remembers it as the Stockholm Bloodbath.

Look closely at the red house and you will see white stones set into its plaster, 82 of them. A popular story says there is one for every victim. It is a good story, but the stones were added in 1628 by a later owner, more than a century after the killings. Cities like to give their history a shape you can point at.

Order the hot chocolate the café is named after and watch the square fill and empty around you.