Walk in Olof Palme's footsteps on Stockholm's most chilling true crime tour
At 23:21 on 28 February 1986, Olof Palme, Sweden's Prime Minister, was shot dead on the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan in the heart of Stockholm — in front of 25 witnesses on one of the city's busiest streets. The murder shook not only Sweden but the entire world, and the investigation grew into the largest police inquiry in the history of the world. The perpetrator has never been definitively identified.
A walk along the murder's exact route
The walking tour "The PM has been shot! Olof Palme's last walk" takes you from the beginning of Palme's final evening right up to the moment that changed Scandinavian political history forever. The tour starts outside the Social Democrats' office building at Sveavägen 68 — an unremarkable façade that conceals its historical weight behind an ordinary exterior.
From there, you follow the route Palme and his wife Lisbeth walked that evening, before the unthinkable happened. At the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan, you can still see today the exact spot where the Prime Minister was struck by a single bullet and died at the scene. Lisbeth Palme was hit in the back but survived. Twenty-five witnesses were standing on the street that evening — and yet the killer managed to disappear.
The murder's legacy and the unremarkable alley
One of the most haunting aspects of the tour is that you walk the killer's escape route yourself. From the scene of the crime, the unknown perpetrator vanished up the steps of the dark Tunnelgatan alley — a narrow, shadowy passage that to this day feels like an open wound in the cityscape. The guide leads you step by step along that same path, as the story of the police's desperate but fruitless manhunt unfolds around you.
The investigation dragged on for decades. A man named Christer Pettersson was sentenced to life in prison in 1989, but was acquitted on appeal the same year. In 2020, prosecutors closed the case with a named suspect who had, however, already died — and no legal outcome was reached. The murder of Olof Palme remains, technically speaking, unsolved.
The tour ends at Engelbrektsplan near Humlegården park, and the guide offers the option of continuing with the group to Östermalmstorg metro station. The tour lasts one to two hours and requires no specialist knowledge — only a willingness to see Stockholm from its darkest angle.
More Stockholm true crime: witch burnings, bank robberies and Stieg Larsson
If the Palme murder is not enough, Stockholm is a city with a surprisingly rich criminal history. Through Viator's range of Stockholm walking tours, you will also find self-guided audio tours that delve into the witch trials of 1676, when Malin Matsdotter was burned alive at the stake — one of the darkest episodes in Nordic legal history.
In Gamla Stan, lantern-lit evening tours tell stories of plague, executions and murder from medieval Stockholm, while Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy has inspired a dedicated tour of the Södermalm neighbourhood, visiting 16 locations from the books — a must for fans of Lisbeth Salander.
For those who want to go deeper into the Palme murder investigation and other Swedish crimes, Sweden History Tours' self-guided "Stockholm Murders — True Crime" tour also covers the Norrmalmstorg drama, the bank hostage case that in 1973 gave the world the concept of Stockholm Syndrome.
Practical information
Detail Info Meeting point Sveavägen 68, Stockholm Duration 1–2 hours Price Contact the organiser Booking Via the TripAdvisor product page Availability Verified active in 2026
The tour requires no prior knowledge of the case — the guide walks you through events from start to finish. Wear comfortable shoes, and be prepared for Stockholm to never look quite the same again once you have walked the route that a killer's flight carved through the city on that cold February night in 1986.
