Amuri Museum of Workers’ Housing

Tampere is the principal industrial city in Finland which prospered in the nineteenth century with the growth of the textile industry. Amuri is a working class district in the city which in 1900 had a population of about 5000, accommodated in blocks of wooden houses in which kitchens were shared by two or four families, built along tree-lined streets. These houses were replaced by low-rise apartment blocks in the 1970s and 80s, but in 1965 a block was reserved for use as a museum. Earlier there had been proposals for an open air museum in Tampere but it was decided that it would be more appropriate to create a museum within a block of existing houses, the first section of which opened in 1975. Three courtyards portray social life in Tampere in three distinct periods, 1882-1909, 1911-1939 and 1932-1973. There is also a traditional communal sauna, a co-operative store of the 1930s and a stationery shop of the 1940s. Visitors can take guided tours of the houses and take refreshments, old-style lemonade and traditional cakes and pastries at the Café Amuri Helmi which opened in 1995.