Lilla Bommen

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Lilla Bommen is a part of Gothenburg’s harbor on the Göta älv and also the name of the land around it. Today it serves as a marina for visiting boats, and the area is known for landmarks like the Gothenburg Opera House and the barque Viking, which are located there. The names Lilla Bommen (The Small Boom) and Stora Bommen (The Large Boom) come from old booms that once blocked the canals and collected taxes from ships passing through.

The harbor lay between two old fortifications, Gustavus Primus and S:t Eriks, and was completed in 1860. It had a quay of 525 meters and a depth of 3.5 meters, and soon became Gothenburg’s main port for canal traffic and domestic shipping. From Lilla Bommen, cargo and passengers traveled up the Göta älv and through the Göta Canal to Vänern, Vättern, Stockholm and Norrköping. The old gunpowder house was demolished in 1862. A railway station for the Västra Götaland–Gothenburg Railway was built there in 1899. In the 1930s, parts of the harbor were filled in: the East Harbor Canal in 1936 and about a third of the inner harbor in 1937–38. At one point there were plans to fill the entire dock and move shipping to Gullberg.

Now Lilla Bommen is a marina operated by Gothenburg Municipality through the Liseberg company. On the west side is the Gothenburg Opera House (completed in 1994); on the east is an office complex that includes a high-rise known locally as Lilla Bommen or The Lipstick. The barque Viking sits moored between the dock and the high-rise. The old Lilla Bommen Bridge, which connected Canal Square to S:t Erik’s Square, became landfill when the canal was filled.

Nearby features include Lilla Bommen Square, created after part of Vallgraven was filled in the late 19th century, and Stadstjänareholmen. In 2001, during construction work, a mid-1700s boat wreck called Götabåten was found buried under heavy landfill. The hull remains were small, but the wreck showed it was about 12 meters long. In 1908 the steamboat Göta Elf capsized and sank in Lilla Bommen, with 26 deaths; the salvage was filmed as an early newsreel. In 1991 a former vessel was turned into a floating multi-story car park named P-Arken, moored near Skeppsbron.