ABSTRACT
In this chapter I discuss daily life and practices in the Finnish polite society in a town called Turku in the early nineteenth-century. I focus in more detail on one certain building, namely the Turku Assembly House, and how it shaped and maintained daily life and different practices of the polite society. My central research questions are firstly how does a certain space, built for the purpose of social gatherings and dancing, act as a scene of everyday life, and secondly what kind of daily routines were created and enacted by members of polite society in this space? The chapter shows how the Assembly House rhythmed the town’s life through weekly social gatherings and balls, and how it offered different kinds of everyday services for the polite society of Turku and the travellers from outside the town. The Assembly was an essential part of the new urban sociability, as it created and enhanced several novel cultural and social practices to Turku.
