Houses and courtyards

The houses and courtyards in Luostarinmäki illuminate the way of living in the 18th and 19th centuries. The very first inhabitants built small dwellings which were later extended to include extra rooms and outhouses.

The only way into the courtyard was through a gate that had a sign above it indicating the address of the house in question. However, not all streets had names or the houses addresses before the fire of 1827 in Turku. The only information as to which address you were in, was the name of the quarter and the number of the plot.

The kitchen-cum-living room was the heart of the home. It was where the family slept, ate and did handicrafts when they couldn’t work outside. Meals were prepared on an open fireplace, and bread was baked once or twice a year in the baking oven. The courtyards of the houses had granaries, barns and cattle sheds for cows, goats and sheep.

As time went by the houses got new owners who repaired and rebuilt them. People wanted to keep up with the latest styles of the time, and so they planked their houses, enlarged their windows as well as painted and wallpapered their rooms. When the Luostarinmäki district was turned into museum grounds, the houses were restored to the style of the early 19th century.

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