The Vasa is a 17th
Century warship that sank on its maiden
voyage only 1300 metres from its launch
site and quite close to its resting place
inside the Vasa Museum. The ship,
along with some members of its crew and
its 64 guns, rested on the bottom on
Stockholm harbour for over 300 years until
it was located in the 1950s and
subsequently retrieved relatively intact
in 1961. For a number of years the
ship was given a temporary home while the
process of preservation was
underway. In the 1980s the Swedish
Government commissioned a design
competition for a permanent home for the
ship and they received 384
proposals. The winning design was
the one presented by Marianne Dahlbäck and
Göran Månsson of "Ask".
The preserved Vasa was
moved into an old dry dock over which
the museum was built.
Outside the building features a copper
roof and three masts that indicate the
original height of the Vasa's
rigging.
