Aurinkolinna Sanatorium

This exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Aurinkolinna (‘Sun Castle’) Sanatorium takes visitors on a journey through the building’s colourful century-long history.

Located in the village of Nastola, Aurinkolinna was originally the largest children’s sanatorium in the Nordic region. Its unique solar architecture was designed to promote healing in patients with bone and joint tuberculosis. Over the decades, the building has served as a war hospital, a care home for people with learning disabilities, and a reception centre for asylum seekers, until it was ultimately left vacant and fell into disrepair. Fortunately, the stately edifice was recently salvaged and restored to its former glory as a community residence.

The exhibition’s theme is community, which is reflected in various aspects of the building’s history. The exhibits map the building’s memory, inviting reflection on the meaning of home, family and community today and yesterday. Despite its varied line-up of occupants over the decades, the ‘sun castle’ has always provided a home to those living within its walls; the children and staff of the sanatorium once formed a family, as did the residents of the care home who lived side by side for decades. So too unexpected friendships were forged across linguistic and cultural barriers among the asylum seekers who once resided there.

The exhibition takes visitors back in time through a curated selection of photographs, rounded out by sanatorium-era architectural drawings, artefacts, poetry and cinefilm. The exhibition was curated by Matti Pietilä, an expert on the building’s history, a current resident, and the coordinator of the renovation project that began in 2012. The exhibition is accompanied by Pietilä’s book marking the building’s 100th anniversary, Aurinkolinnan tuhat tarinaa (A Thousand Stories of Aurinkolinna).