The Estonian Road Museum

Overview

The Estonian Road Museum, situated in a formal Varbuse postal station, operates as a part of the Estonian Road Administration in the administrative area of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. The museum was opened to visitors on June 6, 2005, and its purpose is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display items of Estonian roads, road building and traffic heritage. The museum collections contain about 43000 items, including the biggest road grader collection in Eastern Europe.

The Estonian Road museum is conditionally divided into 2 parts – on the both sides of the historical postal road.  The first permanent exhibition “Tee ajalugu!” was opened in nearly 160 years old Varbuse postal station in 2005. The theme of the exhibition was the history of roads in Estonia, it focused on the development of roads and means of transport from ancient times to the present day. The exhibition was awarded the title of the Exhibition of the Year and it received the national Museum Rat award 2006. Today a new permanent exhibition “Have a Great Journey!” (Head teed!), is situated in the same complex, also the children museum and temporary exhibitions.

In 2010 Road Time (Teeaeg), an innovative outdoor exhibition with historical road space, traffic town for children and collection of road machines was opened.  During the summer season all our visitors are welcome in the museum´s open storage in a small machine hall where best examples of Estonian self-made machines are introduced.

From summer 2019 an exhibition hall that takes up 1500 m² is open to display an outstanding collection of road construction machinery until 1985 including Bitvargen, the first grader Estonian roadbuilders got in 1926 from Sweden. Exhibition also introduces development of car using practices 1920-2000, telling how car turned from luxury goods into consumer goods. The third part of exposition is dedicated to traffic safety.