Arkisto

  • Café Samovarbar — Our Lovely Tearoom and Café in Suomenlinna

    The idea behind our lovely museum café is to serve treats set beautifully alongside tea or coffee. We bake all our cakes and pastries by hand daily, and of course we use honest ingredients. Our philosophy is that the heart of the café is in the quality selection of hot beverages. That’s why we are the go-to place for all tea lovers, and our hot chocolate is renowned. Espresso based drinks are crafted carefully, by hand of course. In the summertime we also have a selection of small producer ice cream. Café Samovarbar also has a liquor license.

    Our selection of treats always has at least one vegan and one gluten free option (please note that we bake everything in the same kitchen so small amounts of cross contamination may occur). Since our tearoom and café is small and cosy, we are unfortunately not able to reserve seats, but we’ll do our best to accommodate everyone!

    We have seating for 25 people indoors, and in the summer when the terrace is open, seating capacity doubles. Our terrace is a great spot to see the ships and other sea traffic passing by.

  • The Museum Shop

    We take it upon our self to find products of outstanding quality and intrigue for the Museum shop. The products sold should also be ethically produced, and preferably made of authentic materials. We sell toys mostly to adult collectors, even though we always try and curate small and affordable objects, that is also easily portable. Our own product line with the picture of the museum bear Amor, are also well loved, as is our selection of postcards.

    Old fashioned brands available in the shop:

  • The Suomenlinna Toy Museum (est.1985)

    The identity of the Suomenlinna Toy Museum is to be an old timey collection museum: here the visitor gets to admire the beautiful and extraordinary artefacts, wonder at the changing times and reflect on their grandparents’ lives. This is not a playground or a children’s culture centre, those you can find in Helsinki City Museum and Espoo. Our target group is nostalgics, hungry for the romance of bygone times, irrespective of age or gender.

    The Toy Museum was started by an artist and antique dealer Piippa Tandefelt, and is now being continued by her daughter Petra Tandefelt since 2003. The collection, like the museum, is private and 100% self-sufficient.

    The Toy Museum is open for two seasons: Summer and Christmas. During the Summer season we are open daily, from the beginning of May until the end of September. Outside these seasons we are open mainly on weekends, and we are always open during the Easter holidays, welcome! At Christmas, the museum is open from the first Advent to epiphany. At Christmas time, of course, the museum has all the old Christmas decorations and elves in the collection on display.

    The museum space has been renovated and expanded twice already, allowing more space for the growing collection – even the soviet toys finally made it to the showcases! Yet, we are still short on space. Another issue is our location on the map, not exactly central. This makes expanding to the residential floors of the Villa not sensible. Our customer flow is not enough to support such a big renovation, even though we’re always dreaming and planning!

    Take a look at the Toy Museum Story on video (subtitles in english):

    The Collector Petra Tandefelt gathered toy stories and delicious pastry recipes into a book, Nallerouva Hunajapurkin Herkkukirja – nostalgisia leluja ja reseptejä (Tammi 2012). Two editions were printed and both sold out, but you can still lend it out from the library (unfortunately the book is available only in Finnish). 2019 saw the self-publication, The Toy Cabinet – Stories from the Toy Museum, which brings background to the iconic jewels of the collection, come to life. The book is available at the Toy Museum and is also available in English.

    The Toy Museum as the museum Café Samovarbar has loyal customers around the world. We are very grateful for any support, including psychological: happy customers are our best sales agents. We hope that you will enjoy your turn in our cute little museum!

    See 360°-view of the exhibition