The Vasa Museum is located on Djurgården Island in central Stockholm and houses a seventeenth-century galleon known as the Regalskeppet Vasa.
In 1626, King Gustav III commissioned the construction of a large warship for the Swedish navy. The boat broke all the records of the time: 64 guns, 1200 tons and a mast capable of supporting the weight of 10 sails.
On 10th August 1628, the ship Vasa was preparing to sail from Stockholm port for her maiden voyage. As it left the port, the wind began to get stronger and stronger until the boat tilted, thus causing the influx of water inside the gunboats. The ship could not bear its own weight and sank a few meters from the port of Stockholm.
In 1958 the Swedish government undertook with considerable technical and economic use, the recovery of the boat succeeding, after two years of work, to bring it back to the surface from the 32 meters deep in which it had spent more than three centuries.
The restoration, quite challenging, gave good results thanks to the microclimate of wood conservation but also thanks to the low salinity of the Baltic Sea.
Today, the Vasa is the best-preserved seventeenth-century ship in the world with 98% of the original objects.
