"A GRANITE CASTLE" ON PUOLALANMÄKI — THE STORY OF TURKU ART MUSEUM

When you step into Café Victor, you're also stepping into a building with over 120 years of history. Turku Art Museum's granite castle on Puolalanmäki isn't just a beautiful backdrop for your coffee break, it's a piece of Turku's cultural history in its own right.

A Society's Dream

The story begins in 1891, when the Turku Art Society was founded. The society's goal was to bring art into everyday life for the city's residents, and the museum's very first artwork, Erik Johan Löfgren's painting "Pyhä Cecilia" (Saint Cecilia), was donated to the collection as early as the 1870s, three decades before the museum building itself was even completed.

The project received a major boost in 1895, when industrialists Ernst and Magnus Dahlström donated 150,000 markka toward the museum's construction, a substantial sum for the time.

The Architectural Competition and Construction

In 1900, an architectural competition was held for the museum building, and Professor Gustaf Nyström of the Helsinki Polytechnic Institute was selected as the winner. Nyström designed a National Romantic granite palace for Puolalanmäki, a style that was popular in early 20th-century Finland, especially for public buildings that emphasized national identity.

Construction began in spring 1902, and the museum opened to the public in spring 1904. The opening exhibition was a major event: over five weeks, the museum welcomed 8,301 visitors, a remarkable number at a time when art museums were still rare in Finland.

The First Director and a Growing Collection

Painter Victor Westerholm served as the museum's first director and head of its drawing school from 1888 to 1919. Under his leadership, the museum's collections grew significantly, including works by some of the leading Finnish artists of the time.

A New Chapter in the 2000s

Between 1999 and 2004, the museum underwent a major renovation, during which operations were temporarily moved to the Vartiovuori Observatory, the same building we mentioned on Cafe Qwensel's blog as designed by C. L. Engel. The renovated museum reopened to the public in 2005, and today, that very same building is also home to Café Victor.

Coffee in the Middle of History

When you sit down at Café Victor, you're part of a vision that's over a century old, one where art and architecture meet. Come enjoy Afternoon Tea or a cup of coffee in the same rooms where Turku's first art museum visitors admired Finnish art more than a hundred years ago!