Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(
MAP
08-442 8039;
www.skansen.se
;
adult/child Skr100/60;
from 10am,
closing times vary by season)
The Skansen Aquarium is worth a wander, its residents including piranhas, lemurs and
pygmy marmosets (the smallest monkeys in the world). Intrepid visitors are allowed into
the cages of some of the animals.
Vasamuseet
MUSEUM
8.30am-6pm; ; 44, Djurgårdsfärjan, 7 Nordiska museet/Vasa)
A good-humoured glorification of some dodgy calculations, Vasamuseet is the custom-
built home of the massive warship
Vasa
. The ship, a whopping 69m long and 48.8m tall,
was the pride of the Swedish crown when it set off on its maiden voyage on 10 August
1628. Within minutes, the top-heavy vessel tipped and sank to the bottom of Saltsjön,
along with many of the people on board. Guided tours are in English every 30 minutes in
summer.
Tour guides explain the extraordinary and controversial 300-year story of its death and
resurrection, which saw the ship painstakingly raised in 1961 and reassembled like a giant
14,000-piece jigsaw. Almost all of what you see today is original.
On the entrance level is a model of the ship at scale 1:10 and a cinema screening a
25-minute film (in English at 9.30am and 1.30pm daily in summer) covering topics not in-
cluded in the exhibitions. There are four other levels of exhibits covering artefacts
salvaged from the
Vasa
, life on board, naval warfare, and 17th-century sailing and naviga-
tion, plus sculptures and temporary exhibitions. The bottom-floor exhibition is particularly
fascinating, using modern forensic science to re-create the faces and life stories of several
of the ill-fated passengers.
The bookshop is worth a browse and there's a restaurant for a well-earned pit stop.
Nordiska Museet
MUSEUM
Skr100/free; 10am-5pm; 44, 69, Djurgårdsfärjan, 7)
The epic Nordiska Museet is Sweden's largest cultural-history museum and one of its
largest indoor spaces. The building itself (from 1907) is an eclectic, Renaissance-style
