Stockholm’s leading museums manage to inspire and surprise viewers and tourists; from pop art to living history and ancient shipwrecks, there’s always an element of surprise.

More than 1 million people visit the Vasa Museet each year to see the boat that made its maiden voyage in 1628 and sunk to the bottom of the Stockholm harbor. Be sure to visit early morning or late afternoon, as the museum can get crowded.

Abba the Museum is quite popular. On one level, it’s a full-on celebration of 1970s fashion excess with props, costumes and the helicopter featured on the 1976 Arrival album. On the other, the museum is an intensely thoughtful, often melancholic experience, about the combination of the craft and graft that goes into being a museum.

Thanks to strong acquisition teams in the 1960s, the Moderna Museet offers a superb collection of Post-Impressionism and beyond and includes works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg and Salvador Dali. The setting is a series of low, light rooms, overlooking water designed by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo. On the weekends, it’s worth timing the visit to coincide with a visit to the museum restaurant’s brunch. Exhibitions in 2017 focus on Marina Abramovic and Louise Nevelson.