Long before Cafe Qwensel opened its doors, an entirely different life unfolded in this same courtyard, one we'd barely recognize as our own today. The Qwensel House, Turku's oldest surviving wooden building, was completed in the early 1700s, in an area Per Brahe the Younger had reserved for officials and nobility back in 1652. The house takes its name from its first known owner, Wilhelm Johan Qwensel, who bought the plot in 1695 after arriving from Stockholm to work for the Court of Appeal.

The house's most famous resident was Dr. Josef Gustav Pipping, Finland's first professor of surgery, who owned it from 1785 to 1815. He was ennobled for his achievements under the name Pippingsköld. Pipping furnished his home in the fashionable rococo and Gustavian styles of the day, and these interior elements survive to this day as part of the Pharmacy Museum.

The house survived the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, after which the surrounding area became known as the "Fortuna quarter." A year later, merchant navy officer Nils Friedrich Tjäder bought the house and built a new wing for his business, the very wing that today houses the Pharmacy Museum, whose shop area holds Finland's oldest surviving pharmacy interior, dating back to 1858. The Qwensel House is in fact considered one of the best-preserved 18th-century noble homes in the Nordic countries.

But back to the question in the title, was morning coffee actually a thing here in the 1700s? The answer might surprise you. Café culture arrived in Finland from Stockholm by way of Turku in the 1740s, and Turku is said to be home to the country's very first café. Coffee caught on quickly, and by the end of the century the city had around a dozen coffee houses. That popularity didn't mean coffee drinking was uncomplicated, though: the Swedish realm issued no fewer than four coffee bans in the latter half of the 1700s, viewing the drink as both an unnecessary import and worryingly intoxicating. The Pipping family, too, likely enjoyed their cup quietly, tucked away from prying eyes within their own walls. Coffee only really became the nation's everyday drink in the 1800s, once the last of the bans had been repealed.

Today, you can enjoy yours in our history-steeped courtyard, minus the bans.