Travel
Vasa Museum is one quirky museum; and the best we've seen in a long time - partly because it is so different from any conventional museum, partly because it is smartly organized and therefore very entertaining.
The museum provides a wealth of information about every chapter in Vasa's history. The ship can be admired from different levels and it's truly gorgeous and incredibly well preserved. There are free English guided tours that start every few minutes by the museum entrance. Different movies about Vasa screen every hour and models illustrating life on the ship are on display. The exhibition is so comprehensive that it hardly leaves any question unanswered. We spent almost 3 hours here. Given that it's a museum with only one exhibit, I believe it is safe to say it really captivated us.
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Travel
Vasa Museum, Stockholm. The Best Museum We've Visited Lately
It was the last day of sightseeing of our month long Interrail trip through Europe. The next day in the morning we were leaving Stockholm to embark on a 16 hours train ride to Frankfurt that would end 4 minutes before midnight when our Interrail Passes would expire. This crazy journey rushing through 3 countries was involving two tight train changes in Copenhagen and Hamburg. To the praise of the Swedish and German rail companies, every train was in time and we managed to cross a huge distance in record time. Of course, the lady from the train information office in Stockholm advised us against taking such risk, but we had faith and that paid off. We didn't want to leave what we consider the most beautiful city in Scandinavia one day earlier. And by staying we managed to visit one more attraction - the Vasa Museum.
Vasa Museum is all built around one single exhibit - the wreck of the warship Vasa. It's just that the shipwreck is one gorgeous piece of art; and it has an interesting and funny story to go with it. Well, it's sorts of a tragicomedy.
Long story short, Vasa was built during the first part of the 17th century. In 1628 it starts it's maiden voyage, just to sinks 1300 meters later in the middle of Stockholm harbor. End of story. Almost.
Eventually no one is blamed for the catastrophe. Several attempts to salvage the ship are conducted, none of them successful. Not up till modern technology is brought to the scene 333 years later. Vasa is put into a provisional museum and the current Vasa Museum is opened in 1990. And here the story really ends.
The museum provides a wealth of information about every chapter in Vasa's history. The ship can be admired from different levels and it's truly gorgeous and incredibly well preserved. There are free English guided tours that start every few minutes by the museum entrance. Different movies about Vasa screen every hour and models illustrating life on the ship are on display. The exhibition is so comprehensive that it hardly leaves any question unanswered. We spent almost 3 hours here. Given that it's a museum with only one exhibit, I believe it is safe to say it really captivated us.
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| Model illustrating life on the ship |
Vasa Museum is in our opinion a definite must visit while in Stockholm. The entrance is included in the Stockholm Card, and it surely is one of a kind experience.
***
We’d like to thank Interrail for providing us with two complimentary global passes for our 1 month Eastern Europe & Scandinavia tour. Though we used the Global Pass for our journey, it's worth noting that single country passes are also available.
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- Wandering Around Skansen - The Ultimate Folk Museum From Stockholm
Having enjoyed only days before the charming Den Gamle By in Aarhus and the quiet Old Bergen Museum, we were curious to see the Swedish version of them. So after exploring Stockholm's canals, we took one of the cute historical trams and...
- A Morning On Stockholm's Royal Canal Boat Tour
Before I even arrived in Stockholm I already knew that going on a canal boat tour was the one thing I wouldn't miss for anything in the world. Therefore when I spotted the Royal Canal Tour on the list of 'free sightseeing' of the...
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