Häme Castle

A keep and curtain wall enclosed by a moat, granite in the lower tiers and red brick above, standing where an island used to be and the lakeshore now is. The keep once had five turrets and shows two; the wall keeps a gatehouse, battlements, an octagonal brick corner turret and a round gun turret. The date is genuinely disputed, tradition ties it to Birger Jarl’s crusade in the mid-thirteenth century, but nothing excavated is firmly older than the 1320s, and a royal document of 1308 lists only one castle in Häme. It has been fortress, noble house, prison and now museum.