Jönköping: the match city on Lake Vättern

On the southern tip of the broad Lake Vättern, Jönköping owes its worldwide fame to the invention of the Swedish safety match.

The city center is comfortably and pleasantly walkable on foot in a few hours.

The Tändsticksmuseum, an interesting museum of matches housed in a former factory, recounts the history of the industry that made Jönköping famous throughout the world in the nineteenth century.

A few minutes away, the vast Lake Vättern, Sweden's second-largest lake with particularly crystalline waters, offers walks along unusual sandy beaches for the region.

Proceeding to the city center, one visits the Jönköping Cathedral, in elegant Baroque style, overlooking the main square of the city.

As evening approaches, the lively harbor district animates restaurants with beautiful views of the vast Lake Vättern at sunset.

Jönköping produced from 1845 onwards the Swedish safety match, an invention that revolutionised household fire-starting and made the city a synonym worldwide for this industry for over an entire century.

Lake Vättern, with waters among the clearest and most transparent in all of Europe thanks to scarce nutrient presence, remains a rare example of an almost completely oligotrophic lake in northern Europe.