Understand
Västerås is by Swedish standards a quite large city, with 107,000 inhabitants in the city proper, which makes it Sweden's fifth largest, and a total of about 134,000 inhabitants in the municipality as a whole. Västerås is also one of Sweden's oldest cities, being officially established in the year 990.
The city name is derived from Västra west Aros old Swedish name for river mouth, which relates to the estuary of the small river creek "Svartån" Black River crossing the city towards Lake Mälaren.
Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius founded Sweden's first high school gymnasium here in 1623.
Västerås has preserved a selection of older buildings, both by the creek and around and north of the city's small Cathedral. They all give the town a bit of a small town atmosphere. Unfortunately hundreds of old houses were demolished, roughly between 1950 and 1975, during one of the country's most thorough city modernization projects. There are however several modern buildings of some architectural interest. The downtown area is generally considered to have an "urban" feel, especially around Stora Gatan, mainly because of the skyscraper cordially nicknamed "Skrapan" with surrounding business, commerce and residential buildings.
Västerås is known for the Asea Brown Boveri ABB electrical industries formerly ASEA.
