Gallen-Kallela Museum

Tarvaspaeae, the Gallen-Kallela Museum, sits on the shore of Laajalahti bay in Espoo and is the former studio home of Finland's national painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela. He designed the turreted granite building himself and moved in in 1913 to work on his Kalevala frescoes and African travel paintings. The house mixes national-romantic stone masses with Art Nouveau interiors and personal souvenirs from Kenya, East Africa and the Saharan desert. Open as a museum since 1961, it shows original works, sketches and the studio largely as left when he died in 1931. A walk from the edge of Helsinki along the coastal Tarvaspaeae path makes a quiet approach to the idiosyncratic studio.