It is probable that the planners of Karlskrona were influenced by the naval bases of Chatham in south-east England, established in 1547, of Rochefort on the French Atlantic coast from 1666 and of the arsenal in Venice. However, Karlskrona was not solely created to meet the needs of the military, for it is the architecture of the baroque with its wide streets and monumental buildings that dominates the town. Equally, the spacious Squares and the grid-net layout is clear evidence that the planners have striven to follow the classical ideals of Greece and Rome.

At the end of the seventeenth- and the beginning of the eighteenth century Karlskrona was both a wholly new conception in town planning and a symbol of Sweden’s Great Power status in Europe.