If you have the opportunity, visiting this museum is highly recommended - they let you walk inside the ship and see both the historical context, as well as the modern restoration process.

It's located in a beautiful park and the nearby Nordiska museum is also quite impressive.

I've been visiting the Vasa every few years for 3 decades and there has never been a time when museum goers were allowed onto or into the ship. I haven't been to Stockholm since the start of the Covid pandemic but I very much doubt that has changed.

They do have some rooms on the side with mock-ups of some of the ship's quarters - maybe that is what you are remembering?

It's funny because I also had this memory of walking around inside the ship when I visited the museum as a child. A few years ago when I visited again I realised it must had been the interior mockups I remember.

Ah, might have been a mockup I remember - the ceilings were quite low and the floor very angled.

It's a sign of how good the mockup and whole museum was that I remember it being better than it actually was.

Eh, no, you are not allowed onto the ship. Still, it is probably the best museum in Sweden.

They won't let you walk inside the ship. At least not a year ago.

It sometimes felt like it was a giant candle-wax drip model 1:1 scale, there is so much preserving coating on the wood.