The earliest information to be found concerning this site and the buildings dates from 1657 when Erich Kårtson, a prosperous burgher, took possession of the site through a deal. However, we can be sure that the area surrounding Porvoo Cathedral had been settled for several hundred years prior to this. According to the1696 deed to the site, the owners were Matts Bonde and his brother-in-law Matts Bijstock and Jören Lambertzs. Little information has come down to us from the years at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Famine of 1696-97 was followed in 1708 by the sacking of Porvoo and a period of Finno-Russian border disputes from 1713 to 1721, during which time the town lay deserted for several years.

According to the register of sites owned by citizens in 1726, the area in question had passed jointly to a wood-turner named Jonas Saxberg and Paul Krogius, a curate.


In 1711 a cottage had been put up on Saxberg's site, approximately where the present restaurant is situated, and after the war of 1713 - 21, a further room and a storehouse were added. On Krogius's half of the site, which remained empty until 1724, a building with two rooms, a kitchen and a storehouse, as well as a cowshed and a stable under the same roof, were erected. After the Great Fire of Porvoo in 1760, the burnt-out site came into the hands of the Orraeus family, but nothing was built on the site until 1780 when Anders Orraeus, a lagman and the tenth mayor of Porvoo, had the main building constructed on the site facing Church Square.

During the Diet of Porvoo in 1809, the building was used as the meeting place for the representatives of the Finnish peasantry. At the same time, the main building was extended with the addition of a stable, a manure shed, and a cowshed. The present restaurant kitchen and staff facilities are situated in this space, which has been carefully converted into workspace serving a modern restaurant.

A building consisting of a residence and a storehouse was erected on the Vuorikatu side of the site in 1790. Today it provides the space for the present restaurant dining rooms. In the early 19th century, when Anders Orraeus moved to Turku, the site and the buildings became the property of Mr. Peron, a Customs clerk. In the 1840s the owner was Mr Wikman, a clockmaker, and from the beginning of the 20thcentury until 1908 a shopkeeper named F.W. Forsman. Since then the site and buildings have been the property of the Berglöf-Hornamo family, now in the third generation. As recently as 1972 the site housed the Berglöf stonemasonry business. In 1977-78, the property was thoroughly renovated, and Ritva and Pekka Hornamo opened a restaurant in it. Since 2003, the restaurateurs have been Matti Jussila and Kari Jalava.