Hanko Museum

Hanko Museum is housed in the former Manner machine workshop at Pitkakatu in Hanko, a coastal town on the southern tip of the Hanko peninsula in Uusimaa, Finland. The museum reopened in 2024 after renovation and tells the story of the peninsula from its seaside spa era, industry, and the Finnish emigration to North America to the Second World War. In the late 19th century Hanko grew into a fashionable spa resort and summer destination, attracting visitors from Saint Petersburg and elsewhere, and it also became Finland's most important winter port and a departure point for emigrants heading to the United States and Canada, with hundreds of thousands passing through. After the Winter War, the Moscow Peace Treaty of March 1940 required Finland to lease the Hanko peninsula to the Soviet Union for 30 years, and the local population was evacuated. A Soviet naval base operated there until December 1941, during the Continuation War, when Soviet forces withdrew. The museum's exhibitions follow these themes in a mostly chronological and thematic way, using photographs, documents, maps, personal objects, and film. A temporary exhibition, Fragments of a World War, ran until 30 August 2026 and focused on wartime objects and stories. The workshop building, with its brick and industrial character, adds to the sense of place, and the displays have been designed with modern lighting and interpretation. Visitors can combine the museum with a walk in the old town, the villa district, the harbour, and the nearby Hanko Front museum for further wartime history. A visit commonly takes one to two hours. Hanko is about 130 kilometres west of Helsinki and is reached by car or by train and bus via Karjaa.