Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 02/07/2026 23:44:00

Carola's breakthrough, Jussi Bjorling's recitals and Laurel and Hardy's Malmo visit all happened behind one of the world's narrowest cinema facades. Palladium at Sodergatan 15, between Stortorget and Gustav Adolfs torg, opened on 26 February 1920 as glass-and-porcelain director Gustaf Lofberg's cinema and concert hall - 1,044 seats behind a street front just one doorway wide, with architect August Stoltz's neo-classical and baroque auditorium reached down a long corridor at the rear. It was the most sumptuous cinema Malmo had seen, the flagship of the Lofberg family's Gota Film empire. The stage was in the plans from day one: German symphony orchestras played the early years, the Malmo symphony orchestra held its concerts here before the city theatre opened in 1944, and the guest list ran from Laurel and Hardy to Jussi Bjorling and Alice Babs. In 1954 the room gained Sweden's largest Cinemascope screen; in 1983 a teenage Carola sang "Framling" here in Melodifestivalen and became a national star overnight - a foyer plaque unveiled in 2023 marks the moment. Film ended in 1996 after 76 years. Region Skane initiated the careful restoration that reopened the house in 2004 as a stage for music and dance, preserving the custom crystal chandeliers, ceiling frescoes and the Gold Foyer. Today the hall - around 530 seated or 850 standing - hosts concerts, contemporary dance, stand-up, film festivals and corporate events, counted among northern Europe's finest rooms for chamber music, with the culture operators Musik i Syd and Dansstationen long based in the house. Guided tours tell the century's story on site. Lofberg's original building was a whole world in itself - cinema, cafe, restaurant, bakery, offices and an atelier stacked around the auditorium, with the Capitol cinema later added at the rear - and the centenary book Palladium 1920-2020 tells the full story, from porcelain shop plans to Cinemascope records. Today's programming spreads across Musik i Syd's chamber and world-music seasons, Dansstationen's contemporary dance and the Next Events concert calendar, keeping the hundred-year-old room in near-daily use.