Gothenburg City Archives Regionarkivet för Västra Götalandsregionen och Göteborgs Stad

History and Founding

The Gothenburg City Archives (Göteborgs Stadsarkiv) traces its origins to the municipal archiving functions of Sweden's second-largest city. The municipal section was formally known as Göteborgs Stads Arkivkontor from 1948 and was renamed Göteborgs Stadsarkiv in 1975. When the Västra Götaland Region was formed on 1 March 1999, the Gothenburg City Council and the regional council established a joint Archive Board (Arkivnämnden) to serve as a shared archive authority under the Swedish Archival Act. The resulting institution, Regionarkivet, was formed from the merger of the county council archives in Vänersborg and Mariestad together with the Gothenburg city archive. The archive has been located at Otterhällegatan 5 in Gothenburg since before 1993, when it moved from its earlier home at Haga Kyrkoplan.

Collections and Holdings

Regionarkivet preserves and provides access to public documents from the City of Gothenburg and Region Västra Götaland, as well as from the defunct county councils of Gothenburg and Bohus County, Skaraborg, and Älvsborg. A second deposit location, Arkivdepå Vänersborg, has been situated at Niklasbergsvägen 14 in Vänersborg's Holmängen district since 2008. The archive also includes Göteborgs föreningsarkiv, which preserves materials donated or deposited by civic associations in Gothenburg.

Notable Materials

Among its notable holdings is the estate of Artur Nilsson (1900–1988), a Gothenburg advertising illustrator and amateur photographer whose collection comprises roughly 63,000 photographs. The archive also holds Gothenburg address and trade directories (adress- och industrikalendrar) from 1850 to 1899, thousands of architectural drawings from the late 17th century onward, sound and image recordings from the Stora Teatern, and the Gothenburg municipal calendars from 1929 to 2001, which document the city's governance and administration over seven decades.

Access and Usage

Researchers can search holdings through the online portal at sok.regionarkivet.se. The archive provides supervision and advisory services for records management within both the city and regional administrations and accepts donations and deposits from Gothenburg-area associations. The reading room and public services are operated from the Gothenburg depot.