Käsmu Maritime Museum

The Käsmu Maritime Museum occupies the former Soviet border guard station at the tip of the peninsula — a wooden two-storey building looking out over the Gulf of Finland. The collection traces the village's two great maritime traditions: the legitimate one, when Käsmu produced more sea captains per head than anywhere else in Estonia in the late nineteenth century, and the less legitimate one, when prohibition-era smugglers ran salt and spirits across to Finland by night.

The exhibits are a magpie's collection — ship's wheels, sextants, captain's portraits, smuggling boats, washed-up message bottles, the personal effects of half the village's sea captains. Mr Vaik's personal narration is the highlight if you can catch him. Open daily in summer, weekends only out of season; small entry fee.

things to do museum
A story
The museum was founded in 1993 by Aarne Vaik, a former Soviet-era border guard who collected objects washed up on the Käsmu shore for decades. He still runs the museum personally in the old border guard station — the same building from which, under Soviet rule, the entire coast was watched for would-be escapees attempting to cross to Finland.