The Vassa Museum - A Must-See in Stockholm

Even folks that eschew museums will like this one. You can see the whole thing in an hour and a half and there is only one thing to see: The Vassa ship that sunk in the bay nearby and remained underwater, mostly preserved by the cold depths, and later resurrected and restored. Most of the ship is original. The parts that are not are purposely made a different color so visitors can see the restored pieces. The whole story of why the ship was made and why it sunk less than 30 minutes into it's maiden voyage is rich with symbolism....In blunt terms, the King wanted to make an impression so he forced the engineer's at the last minute to add another deck and to have the heavy guns on top deck for the maiden highly publicised voyage. This made the ship more unstable - this told to me by Swedish colleagues but the web page seems to light touch that part. The King ordered a "Root Cause Analysis" which was quickly closed when all indications said it was the King's fault. Wikipedia has an excellent description of what happened plus some technical details.