Stockholm is home to the Vasa Museum, which displays the warship Vasa after its recovery from the seabed.
Vasa sank on 10 August 1628 during its maiden voyage, shortly after leaving Stockholm harbour. A gust of wind caused the heavily armed ship to heel, and water entered through open gun ports. The vessel was raised in 1961 after more than three centuries underwater.
The ship survived unusually well because the Baltic Sea has low salinity, which discourages shipworms that damage wooden wrecks in saltier waters. After recovery, conservation specialists treated the timber and gradually stabilized the massive structure.
The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 on Stockholm’s island of Djurgården. The ship remains the museum’s central object, although much of the museum explains seventeenth-century shipbuilding, life aboard, warfare, and the long preservation project. Vasa is not the same vessel as the later Swedish warship Kronan, which exploded and sank in 1676.