Ronneby

Ronneby is a locality and the seat of Ronneby Municipality in Blekinge County, Sweden with 11,767 inhabitants in 2005.^[1]

Ronneby is regarded as the heart of "the Garden of Sweden", and in 2005 the park "Brunnsparken" in Ronneby was voted Sweden's most beautiful park. 2006 the park was voted Europe's 4th most beautiful park. Ronneby also has a church which was founded in the 12th century.

History

The city was first granted city privileges in 1387. The first recorded spelling of the name (around the year 1300) is Rotnæby, "the village upon the roaring (river)", so named because of the rapids on the spot. In the Middle Ages Ronneby was an important trading and shipping town.

In 1564, Ronneby was the location of a bloody battle during the Northern Seven Years' War between the Swedish and the Danish armies during which the Swedes under King Erik XIV besieged the city, killed many inhabitants and burnt it to the ground. Erik later reported that "The Water was red from blood of the Danes." The number of victims was heavily exaggerated, for different propagandistic reasons, by both sides.

Following the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, whereby Blekinge and other southern provinces became Swedish land, a navy base was built in Karlskrona – east of Ronneby – which accordingly was granted city rights, while revoking the city rights of Ronneby.

But Ronneby did attract some industries in the 18th century. Besides the industry, it also hosted Ronneby spa, believed to have healing qualities. The park around the spa can still be visited. The first source of irony water was found in May 1705. But the high period of the spa was in the 19th century.

After a fire in 1864, Ronneby was rebuilt according to a check pattern, which is still the model of today. Ronneby finally once more got the title of a city in 1882. Since 1971 it is the seat of the larger Ronneby Municipality.

The city had used a coat of arms with the letter R between a star and a crescent at least since 1542. In 1882, the arms were redesigned, with the R substituted with the Ronnebyå River. The same coat of arms is today used by the municipality.

Its sister cities are Johnson City, Tennessee and Enfield, Connecticut in the United States of America.

Education

• Blekinge Institute of Technology (moved to Karlskrona in August 2010)

Sports

The following sports clubs are located in Ronneby:

• Ronneby BK
• Fredriksbergs BK has for long been Blekinge´s only remaining bandy club despite very bad preconditions. They often have had to play their home matches at Åby/Tjureda´s ice rink in Växjö Municipality. In the summer of 2011 the decision came to build an artificially frozen bandy rink.[1]

See also

• Ronneby, Minnesota

References

External links

• Collection of Ronneby links
• Official website