Mechanical Music Museum

Mechanical Music Museum in Varkaus displays over 400 self-playing instruments spanning from the 1850s to modern times, including music boxes, pianos, violins, and accordions. The collection represents different styles and technological approaches that makers used to create sound without live musicians.

Founded in 1981, the museum focuses on instruments dating from the 1850s onward, a period when makers began engineering self-playing music devices. The collection traces how craftspeople gradually built more complex machines capable of reproducing musical performances.

Mechanical instruments once brought music to homes and public spaces without electricity or performers. Visitors here experience how people enjoyed entertainment through these ingenious machines across different eras.

Guided tours are available multiple times daily and help explain how each instrument works and sounds. Plan to spend time listening to the machines in action, as the experience depends on hearing the actual music they produce.

The museum houses the Popper Goliath, an enormous self-playing device so large and heavy it rivals a small vehicle, designed to simulate the sound of roughly 75 musicians simultaneously. This instrument represents the extreme engineering effort some makers invested in automating complex musical arrangements on a grand scale.