Grillska Huset (Stockholm)

 cafe, listed building / architectural heritage

Café and bakery in a corner of Stortorget is run by a charitable group that works with the homeless. For a real treat, walk through the downstairs café and follow the signs through to the tranquil first-floor terrace, one of Gamla Stan's best-kept secrets.
Built by the merchant Hans Bremer in the 1640s and originally featuring pointed cairns, Number 3, on the right side of Köpmangatan still features the original cross vaults and a German inscription in the entrance hall. However, the building is today called Grillska huset ("The Grill House") after the goldsmith Antoni Grill, who immigrated from Augsburg to Sweden in the 1680s during the era of Gustavus Adolphus to found the Grill Dynasty, said to descend from the Grillo family in Genoa. He bought the building which came to remain in the family's possession for more than a century. The cloverleaf-shaped gables were added in 1718 together with the blue livid colour and the Rococo portal. The Dynasty's most prominent member was the merchant Claës Grill (1705–1767), leader of the East India Company, owner of several banks and many mining industries and shipping companies, and a great art collector. The building is today the headquarters of the Stockholm´s City Mission, an independent Christian charity devoted to support homeless and exposed citizens with food, accommodation, and education, also running advisory bureaus and others elsewhere in the old town.