The centrepiece of this engaging attraction is a vast auction house where farmers arrived with boatloads of produce then waited – afloat – inside, until they could paddle through an auction room where wholesale grocery buyers would bid on the produce. Built in 1878, it sits on 1900 piles. You can tour the immense interior and re-created auctions where the winning bid gets a bag of apples. Prices include auction-house and museum entry as well as a boat ride.
On its exterior, the museum shows some of the 15,000 islands. Inside, the exhibits on how the farms worked are a combination of high-tech wizardry and old-fashioned mechanised gadgets. It runs 45-minute tours around some of the 200 surviving island plots nearby. On the grounds you can see some of the traditional crops in situ. There's a fine little cafe.
