Turning Torso is the white tower that twists above Malmö’s western harbour, and the shape most people picture when they think of the city. Santiago Calatrava designed it, HSB Malmö owns it, and it opened on 27 August 2005. It is a home before it is a sight: 147 apartments fill most of the tower, ten floors hold offices, and the two top floors are meeting rooms. That shapes any visit. There is no public viewing platform and no spontaneous visits; the top opens to the public only on pre-booked dates in the warmer months.
So why go? First, the building works best from the ground. Walk once around it and the stacked segments turn against each other, 1.6 degrees per floor, so the silhouette changes with every few steps. Second, the district around it is a destination in itself. Västra hamnen was Kockums shipyard land, where civil shipbuilding ended in 1987; the Bo01 housing expo in 2001 turned it into a showcase of waterfront housing, with a bathing deck, a promenade and a skatepark a few minutes’ walk from the tower. Combine the two and you have a half day.
What you will see
The tower rises 190 metres over 54 floors. The twist is carried by a concrete core with an inner diameter of 10.6 metres; its wall thins from 2.5 metres at the base to about 0.4 metres at the top. Underneath sits a foundation slab 7 metres thick and 30 metres across, and the structure used roughly 4,400 tonnes of reinforcing steel and 25,000 cubic metres of concrete. The skin is made of about 2,313 facade panels and 2,368 windows, which is why it reads as smooth white from a distance and as a grid up close.
Because the tower is private, the outside is what most people get. The owner has put a guided digital tour in the Umami Stories app, in Swedish and English, which fills in the construction story while you circle the base. For the classic long view, walk out along the promenade to Daniapark, which has a viewing platform facing the water.
If you have booked a visit, the sequence is fixed. The apartment lift runs at 5 metres a second and reaches the top in 38 seconds. You then have the two identical top floors, a short presentation about the building, and the view from floor 54 over the Öresund and the city. A Skybar sells a fika or a glass of champagne while you look.
Visiting: hours, admission, booking
The facts box on this page carries the entry slots and the adult price; it also flags that these are seasonal slots rather than opening hours. The pattern for summer 2026 was this: HSB Malmö opened the top floors in weeks 27 to 35 on selected Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with entry at 13:00, 14:00 and 15:00, then on non-holiday Saturdays until week 44. Places are limited and tickets are sold only in advance through Tickster. Expect the next season to be announced on HSB’s news pages in early summer, and treat the dates above as a guide to the rhythm, not a promise.
Prices are simple. An adult ticket costs SEK 195 and a child up to ten pays SEK 100; HSB Malmö members pay SEK 150 and SEK 50. The ticket covers the trip up to the 54th floor and the presentation. Groups can book a private visit outside the public slots: SEK 320 per person for 10 to 24 people, SEK 255 for 25 to 49 and SEK 190 for 50 to 80, with a minimum charge of SEK 4,500 excluding VAT. Study visits are bookable all year, so a school or a club has a route to the top outside the public season. The same top floors are run as a conference venue, Sky High Meetings, for up to 80 guests, so a private event can also close the floors on a day you had counted on.
One caution. The tower’s own website was unreachable when we checked, so do not rely on it for dates; the pages that work are HSB Malmö’s and Sky High Meetings’, both linked from this article.
Getting there
The address is Lilla Varvsgatan 14, in Västra hamnen on the north-west edge of the centre. Skånetrafiken’s city buses stop right outside: the Malmö bus map shows a stop called Turning Torso on line 8, the Lindängen–Västra hamnen route, which also serves Scaniabadet; lines 5 and 8 both terminate at Västra hamnen a short walk away, and Ubåtshallen and Dockan on line 5 are the other stops on the same map that put you within a few minutes of the tower. If you plan to ride more than once, note that Skånetrafiken’s 24-hour ticket costs the same as two single tickets. We could not read the single-ticket price from Skånetrafiken’s site this time, so check the app before you board. Our Sweden transport guide explains how tickets work.
Walking or cycling from the station is easy and flat; Malmö has 515 kilometres of cycle paths and the harbour route is one of the pleasant ones. From Denmark the tower is a day trip: trains from Copenhagen Airport reach Malmö C in under 30 minutes, and driving from central Copenhagen over the bridge takes around 50 minutes. The Öresund Bridge itself carries 8 kilometres of rail and road and is the longest of its kind in Europe, so the crossing is part of the outing rather than a chore.
Nearby
Everything worth seeing here is on foot. Scaniabadet, the bathing deck below the tower, has been in use since 2005 and is where Malmö swims in summer. Follow the promenade to Daniapark for the viewing platform, or head inland to Varvsstaden, the old shipyard quarter, and the old slipway that now serves as a skatepark. The Kockums crane that once dominated this skyline is gone; it was dismantled in 2002 and sold to Hyundai Heavy Industries, and the tower took its place as the city’s marker.
South along the coast, Ribersborgsstranden is a 1.5-kilometre sandy beach. Back towards the centre, Gamla Väster keeps the low old streets and Möllevången is the district for cheaper eating; our Malmö city guide covers both. For a second day, Lund, the cathedral and university town, is a short train ride inland.