Karen Blixen Museum

The Karen Blixen Museum, located 10 km outside of Nairobi, Kenya, "at the foot of the Ngong Hills", is the former African home of Danish author Karen Blixen, famous for her book Out of Africa which chronicles life at the estate.HistoryLocated in what was then British East Africa, the bungalow-style house which is now the Karen Blixen Museum was built in 1912 by the Swedish engineer Åke Sjögren, The house and its attached property were bought in 1917 by Karen Blixen and her husband, Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke with the intention of operating a coffee plantation. While she separated from her husband in 1921, After the Blixens separated Karen Blixen continued to live at the house and run the plantation until she returned to Denmark 1931. Her life here is chronicled in her most famous book, Out of Africa, as well as in her book Shadows of the Grass.The house was later donated by the Danish government in 1964 to the new Kenyan government as an independence gift. It was opened to the public in 1986 as one of Kenya's national museums following the popularity of the 1985 movie, Out of Africa. (However, this house was not used for the filming of Out of Africa, as the pictures were taken in her first farmhouse, Mbagathi, nearby, where she lived between 1914 and 1917.) Nowadays the museum is situated in the upscale Nairobi suburb of "Karen," a town that was created by the parcelling out of the coffee farm's land after Blixen's return to Denmark.