Skeppsbron 12, 111 30 Stockholm, Sweden
Joseph Brodsky often visited Sweden, even calling it his ecological niche. For six years, from 1988 to 1994, he spent several months almost every summer living at the First Hotel Reisen in Stockholm.
Brodsky greatly valued his Stockholm refuge. The Reisen Hotel was established on the site of an 18th-century coffeehouse, where enterprising owners began renting rooms to guests. The building itself is based on the vaults of the 17th-century city wall, parts of which are now displayed as historical exhibits. But what attracted Brodsky most were the views from the hotel windows. They reminded him of Russia.
After receiving the Nobel Prize in 1987, these visits became frequent and regular. In August 1989, Brodsky wrote from Stockholm: "It’s hot here, a jackhammer in the yard from 7 a.m., accompanied by sandblasting. Normal stuff; the main thing is the water and everything else — familiar in color and texture. The whole city is like Petrograd Side. Steamships dart through the skerries, and so on, and so forth. Terribly reminiscent of childhood — not what it was, but the opposite." The most important thing for him was the beautiful view of the river, where he sought inspiration. "In this city, as soon as you step out of the hotel, a salmon jumps out of the water to greet you," wrote Joseph Brodsky about his room at the Reisen Hotel. The corner room, where the poet worked on 'The Shore of the Unhealable,' was small but faced the city center and allowed him to admire the white ship moored practically at the hotel entrance.
Sources:
https://dom.mail.ru/articles/60270-6-istoricheskih-otelej-v-kotoryih-zhili-izvestnyie/
designdeluxegroup.com/magazine/2021/12/17/отелей-где-творилась-история/
Ya.A. Gordin "The Knight and Death, or Life as a Design: On the Fate of Joseph Brodsky"
https://bergberg.livejournal.com/777436.html
