The Museum of Old Vaasa
The museum is open during summer, 1.6-31.8.2023. Opening hours are tuesday – sunday, 10-17.
The Museum of Old Vaasa is located in the Wasastjerna House, in the city quarter known as Old Vaasa. You can learn about the history of Vaasa before the fire of 1852, which destroyed most of the city as it was then.
The museum’s ticket sales desk offers a small selection of cards, historically-themed museum shop items and books. The vaulted storage room on the ground floor functions as a café,Falander’s Cellar, which during the summer serves coffee, tea and soft drinks.
The Wasastjerna House
The Wasastjerna House was built between 1780 and 1781 by shipowner, tradesman and assemblyman Abraham Falander (1746-1815), who was ennobled and subsequently bore the name Wasastjerna. The building was the only privately owned stone building which was spared in the great fire of 1852. The house has two living floors and two vaulted cellar and storage floors.
After the death of Wasastjerna, the building was let as lodgings and in the 1840s the building also accommodated the upper secondary school Vasa gymnasium and Vaasa Savings Bank. In the early 20th century, the building housed the Old Vaasa Pharmacy. In 1952, the Wasastjerna House opened as a museum commemorating the 100th anniversary of the great fire of Vaasa.
The courtyard was complemented in the 1950s when outbuildings from the new city of Vaasa were relocated here, an 18th-century storehouse from Solf and a farmhouse from the Louko homestead in Ylistaro. It is believed that the house survived the devastation of the Greater Wrath.
The museum’s rooms
The rooms of the museum are decorated with furniture in the style of a bourgeois 18th– and 19th-century home and include utensils and ornaments that survived the Vaasa fire. The scale model of the city, the shipowner’s office and the post office likewise tell us about life in the past.
The first floor presents the period of Russian rule featuring Empire and Biedermeier style furniture and furnishings. This floor also exhibits a 19th-century shipowner’s office presenting the work of Commercial Counsellor and shipowner Carl Gustaf Wolff.
The second floor presents items from the period of Swedish rule. The rooms are decorated in the style of the 18th century. The Gustavian style, named after King Gustav III, is prominent on this floor. Abraham Falander received King Gustav IV Adolf and his companions in the upper drawing-room, now furnished as a dining room, on 19 July 1802 during the king’s visit to Ostrobothnia. The side room is a bedroom with an extendable bed and a dressing mirror. This floor also has a room displaying furniture originating from the Malander family.