Museums in Ostrobothnia

Maritime Museum of Kristinestad

Kstadssjfartsmuseum3202
Kstadssjfartsmuseum3232
kstadssjfartsmuseum3170
Kstadssjfartsmuseum3178
Kstadssjfartsmuseum3202
Kstadssjfartsmuseum3232
kstadssjfartsmuseum3170
Kstadssjfartsmuseum3178
Did you know...
Kristinestad was playfully called “the Paris of the west coast”, because the merchant vessels and seamen brought with them new habits and ideas, that quickly gained footing in the city and lat ...
Kristinestad was playfully called “the Paris of the west coast”, because the merchant vessels and seamen brought with them new habits and ideas, that quickly gained footing in the city and later spread to the rest of the country.

In the Maritime Museum of Kristinestad are preserved items, photographs and stories connected to seafaring, sailing and the city’s shipping company activity. The incredible sailing trips of the old times come to life in the versatile exhibition.

The Maritime Museum is situated in the centre of Kristinestad on the attic floor of an empire building next to the market square. In the premises used to function the Wendel shipping company’s sail seamster’s workshop. The visitor gets to explore seaman life through the equipment and instruments of old sail ships, an old-fashioned diving suit, through paintings of ships, photographs, sailor trunks and the exotic items of faraway countries. The reconstructed interior of the vessel Ulrica built for Otto Wendelin in 1854-55 represents a very luxurious ship, where columns and a cassette ceiling have been used in the decoration of the cabin.

Kristinestad is an old shipping company and maritime city, with traditions reaching all the way to the 17th century. Stately vessels, which sailed the seas of the world, were built in Tjärholmen. The first vessels were simple skutas, later brigs and yachts, which were in traffic in the North Sea and the Mediterranean in the 18th century. There were also frigates and one barque, which sailed the oceans. The sea provided the citizens with livelihood through fishing and indirectly through trade. Cotton from America, salt, tobacco and sugar were unloaded from the ships in the harbour of the city, and tar and timber loaded in.

The period from the 1830s to the 1850s was the golden age of sail ships. That’s when also Kristinestad developed into an important shipyard and harbour city. Kristinestad was once the starting point of numerous sailing trips to the world. Posters dating back to the turn of the 20th century tell about the lively emigration to America, and artefacts reveal sad stories of shipwrecks.

There is a scale model of the barque Alma in the market square café on the shore. Alma was built in Kristinestad in 1875. The scale model is 7 m in length. The museum’s boat exhibition is located right outside the city centre and it includes both motor and wooden boats. The museum is worth a visit solely because of the detailed scale model of the Kristinestad shipyard and steamship harbour.