Vasa Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Vasa Museum (Vasamuseet) is a maritime museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Located on the island of Djurgården, the museum displays the only intact 17th-century ship, the Vasa, an elaborately ornamented Swedish galleon that sank on the maiden voyage in 1628. The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to claims on the official web site, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia.
After the newly raised Vasa had been towed into the Gustav V drydock in Sweden's naval shipyard in Stockholm in April 1961, she was put down on a specially built floating pontoon on which a superstructure made of aluminum sheets was built. The temporary building, Wasavarvet, was intended as a space for the preservation treatment but it was also equipped with visitor galleries in two levels around the walls inside the housing.
In 1981, the Swedish government decided that a permanent Vasa museum was to be constructed and an architects' competition for the design of the museum building was organized. A total of 384 architects sent in models of their ideas for the most suitable building to house the Vasa. The commission to design the museum went to the Swedish architect team Göran Månsson and Marianne Dahlbäck.
The construction work began with an inauguration ceremony performed by His Royal Highness Prince Bertil on 2 November 1987. During the summer of 1989, visitors were allowed onto the construction site, and 228 000 people visited the half-finished museum. The Vasa museum was officially inaugurated on 15 June 1990.
[edit] Discovery of the Vasa
The intact wreck of the warship Vasa was discovered by Swedish underwater archaeologist Anders Franzen in 1956. In 1972, Franzen was awarded a Doctor of Marine Histories degree by the Sea Research Society in part for his role in the discovery and raising of this amazingly intact shipwreck.
