A glimpse of Old Turku

Yesterday we went to the Luostarinmäki museum in Turku. It's one of those museums that's not really a museum - it's a "living history" village set up in the style of 1790s-1810s Turku. Except it actually IS 1790s-1810s Turku. The buildings are original, in their original locations, and I suspect many (if not most) of the furnishings are original, too. The buildings were condemned in the late 1800s for not being fire-resistant, but were not immediately demolished. By the time the city got around to it in the early 1900s, they thought they may as well leave it as a museum. I'm so glad they did!

My idea of heaven includes the provision that we are allowed to go back in time and visit any place or event we wish - observe the court of Henry VIII, for example, or spend a day crossing the plains with the pioneers (all of this without being subject to beheading or dysentery, of course). So I loved the idea of traipsing around a 200-year-old section of town. It spoke to both my imagination and my sense of history. Take this view - aside from the lack of steaming piles of refuse and manure that would probably make it more authentic, it looks much the same now as it did 200 years ago:

(Obligatory Hamilton reference: when I told the girls the time period of these buildings, they gave each other A Look. "So...if Alexander Hamilton had come to Turku, this is what he would have seen?" Miriam asked.)

Most of the homes and business were made up to be as they once were. It was humbling to see what was the height of comfort back then and what we take for granted now. Big beds, for example, and soft, comfortable couches. How did people ever do without them?

That said, some of the lack of comforts in these homes was simply due to location - if you were to look at homes from a similar time period in Stockholm, or especially St. Petersburg, I suspect they'd be a bit fancier.

Bread drying/cooling/being stored.

Old-timey candy shop.

Sterling being Sterling.

I highly recommend this museum - it's as close as you can come to going back in time in Turku.