Every December, the first weekend of the month turns the Turnblad Mansion on Park Avenue into a Scandinavian marketplace. Julmarknad, the American Swedish Institute’s handcraft market and festival, runs December 4–6, 2026 this year, with more than 60 vendors, live music and festive food filling a 1908 castle of a house that ASI has already dressed for the holidays. If you are coming in from out of town for it, or you live here and want to make a whole weekend of it, the question is where to stay. Our answer, naturally, is a hundred-year-old mansion of your own, about two miles up the road in Loring Park.
What is Julmarknad, and when is it?
Julmarknad is ASI’s Christmas market: three days of Minnesota makers, Nordic crafts, music and food inside and around the Turnblad Mansion at 2600 Park Avenue. ASI describes it as one of the region’s largest handcraft markets, and its own calendar lists the Saturday market and festival on December 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a Saturday ticket priced at $24. Festival days can carry special pricing and may require advance registration, so check ASI’s hours and prices page before you plan the day.
The market sits inside a much longer season. Remember When, ASI’s annual holiday experience, opens November 7, 2026 and runs through January 24, 2027. It is the 76th year the institute has decorated the mansion for the holidays, and this year each room recreates a holiday moment from decades past. Around it ASI has scheduled a Lutfisk Dinner on November 15, a family holiday concert on November 28, the Lucia Celebration Concert on December 12 and the Winter Solstice Celebration on December 18, with outdoor fires, glögg and a reindeer. The Jul Shop in the museum store is open November 7 through January 4, and FIKA Café runs a holiday menu.
Regular hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with Thursdays open until 8 p.m. The museum is closed on Mondays and on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Standard adult admission is $17, with lower rates for visitors 62 and older, students and youth, and free entry for children five and under. Admission includes the mansion itself, all 33 rooms of it.
Why stay in a mansion for a mansion weekend
There is something fitting about touring one Gilded Age house by day and sleeping in another by night. 300 Clifton is the 1906 Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion, on the National Register of Historic Places and generally considered the finest example of Georgian architecture in Minnesota. Where the Turnblad house is French Renaissance limestone and turrets, ours is white clapboard, a columned portico and a wraparound porch, with hand-painted murals and carved fireplaces inside. The two houses were built within a few years of each other by families who made their money in very different ways; you can read about the industries behind Minneapolis’s mansions in our post on how those families got rich.
Both houses are on the Minneapolis Trolley Tours Gilded Age mansion route, which leaves from the Pillsbury Club on East 22nd Street. If you want the full picture of who built what along Park Avenue, our guide to the mansions you can tour lists the whole route, and every direct booking with us includes a $20 Minneapolis Trolley voucher per stay, plus a $20 Pillsbury Club dining voucher per stay. Details are on our vouchers page.
A December weekend, planned
Friday. Check-in is from 3 p.m. Settle into your room, then walk to dinner. Loring Park sits between Eat Street and the Nicollet Mall end of downtown, so you can pick a direction on foot; Loring Park itself is across the street from the mansion. Come back and book the garden hot tub, which runs in all four seasons. Steam rising into cold December air is the best argument for a winter stay we know of.
Saturday. Julmarknad’s Saturday market opens at 10. ASI is about two miles from Clifton Avenue, straight down toward Park Avenue, a short drive or rideshare; if you would rather not drive, Metro Transit’s trip planner will give you the bus options from downtown. Give the market a few hours, then walk the decorated mansion rooms and stop at FIKA for the holiday menu. Back at 300 Clifton, the evening belongs to Gertrude’s Cistern, our speakeasy and haunted video lounge with heated reclining seats, which you can book privately for a film.
Sunday. Check-out is by 10 a.m., and a late check-out can be added for $25 if you would rather have a slow morning. If your dates run later in the month, the Lucia concert on December 12 and the solstice bonfires on December 18 make the same weekend plan work twice more, and the Guthrie’s A Christmas Carol and two Nutcrackers on Hennepin Avenue are all playing in December too.
Which room to book
For a December splurge, the king Crystal Mansion and Georgian rooms are the grandest spaces in the main house, each with a private bath. The Carriage House rooms, Coachman’s, Hayloft and the Blacksmith’s Forge, are cozier and one of a kind. The Estate Rooms are the most affordable and share a bath; every other room has a private en-suite. All rooms have air conditioning and WiFi, and children are welcome (pets are not). Breakfast is not served on site, but complimentary coffee is in the common area, and guest parking is available. The full list of practical answers is on our FAQ.
Book the first weekend in December early
Julmarknad is one of the region’s largest handcraft markets, and December weekends at a mansion with eight room types go quickly. Booking directly with 300 Clifton gets you the best available rate, the two vouchers, and the option to add the hot tub or a private movie night to your stay. Check availability for December 4–6, or any weekend of the holiday season, and we will have the porch lights on.