Moomin Museum

The Moomin Museum opened in its present form in Tampere Hall in 2017 and holds the original artwork of Tove Jansson: ink drawings, watercolours and paintings made for the Moomin books, along with manuscripts and material from her wider career as a painter and illustrator. The work is shown in low light because the originals are fragile, which gives the galleries a particular atmosphere. Its best-known object is the Moominhouse, a five-storey model built by Jansson with Tuulikki Pietila and Pentti Eistola over years, furnished in detail floor by floor. Tableaux by Pietila reconstruct scenes from the books in three dimensions.

History

The blue, five-storey model of the Moominhouse was built in the late 1970s by Tove Jansson, Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola for the Bratislava illustration biennale of 1979; it was made square rather than round to fit a corner of the hall, built freely floor by floor without plans, its ground floor sketched by the architect Reima Pietilä. After touring the Nordic countries in 1980-83 it was shown at the Tampere Art Museum in 1986 and has been on permanent display since 1987. The museum, called Moominvalley, was in the basement of the city library's Metso building until 2012 and then at the Tampere Art Museum, and in 2016 it moved to Tampere Hall, reopening as the Moomin Museum in June 2017 with some 2,000 exhibits, including 40 miniatures and Jansson's illustrations (Wikipedia, Moomin Museum).

Highlights

• Original Jansson drawings - the ink and watercolour work for the books.
• The five-storey Moominhouse - the model built by Jansson and friends.
• Three-dimensional tableaux - scenes from the stories built in miniature.
• Manuscripts and wider work - Jansson beyond the Moomins.

When to go

Year round. Two hours. Closed Mondays. It is busiest in school holidays. Photography is not permitted, to protect the originals.

Good to know

Photography is banned throughout, which surprises many visitors. Galleries are deliberately dark and some find it hard to see detail. It is small for the ticket price. Children expecting a theme park will be disappointed; that is at Naantali.

Nearby

The Finlayson area is north; the station lies west.

Key facts