Livet – Fabriksgatan (English) – Kristinehamn

During the biggest event of the year , Fastingsmarknaden/ The Fasting market, the city was filled with people from near and far. Not far from where you are standing now, if you walk by Biblioteksgatan to Tullportsgatan, you will see a white wooden house in the avenue. This building is called Träslottet/ The Wodden castle (Tullportsgatan 11). The house from 1790 originally stood at Södra torget, on the plot in front of the current city hotel/ Stadshotellet. When the hotell was built in 1878, Träslottet moved to Tullportsgatan.
During the 19th century, the lower floor of the building housed seven sheds, an antechamber and four bedrooms. On the upper floor there were nine rooms, kitchen and pantry. In these kind of inns one changed horses, ate and slept before traveling on.

Inns played an important role during the Fasting Market, when many hundreds of visitors had to be accommodated, but there wasn´t enough inns in Kristinehamn. How was the housing issue resolved?
- Everyone who came brought advanced sleeping wagons, or exclusive tents.
- Temporary barracks were set up in the fields outside the city.
- All the houses were unusually large and had extra rooms. Everything was rented out.

Take the opportunity to …

Life in Kristinehamn