Landskrona · SE

Center of Europe - LANDSKRONA

On Landskrona's main pedestrian street, Järnvägsgatan, stands a bright yellow pen plunged into a block of stone. It is a dead-straight, slightly tongue-in-cheek monument claiming something improbable: that this small Skåne town is the exact centre of Europe. Known locally as 'Pennan' (the Pen), it marks the spot where, in 1988, a former harbour master's mathematical hobby briefly put Landskrona on the continental map. The idea came from Arne Wennberg, an ex-seaman fond of spherical trigonometry and early home computers. Taking the three outermost corners of Europe — Cabo de São Vicente on Portugal's southwest tip, a point on northern Spitsbergen, and Astrakhan where the Volga meets the Caspian — he calculated the single point equidistant from all three. The answer landed, to within centimetres, on Landskrona's Town Hall Square. The municipality, tourist office in tow, made a cheerful event of it, printing special decals and letterhead to market the town as the 'Centre of Europe.'