The Museum was built in 1912 by Swedish Engineer Ake Sjogren. Karen and her husband bought the Museum house in 1917 and it become the farm house for their 4500 acre farm, of which 600 acres was used for coffee farming. Their marriage failed after eight years and in 1921 the Baron moved on and left the running of the farm to Karen. Karen lived at the house until her return to Denmark in 1931. The house farm was bought by Remy Marin, who broke the land into 20 acre parcels for development.

Subsequent development created the present suburb of Karen. Records indicate that a Lt. Col.G. Lloyd, an officer of the British Army bought the house in 1935 and lived there until his death in 1954, when it passed to his daughters, Mrs. G. Robersts and Lavender Llyod.  A transfer of title to Mrs. J.P Robson and Mrs L.B. Hyde is in City Hall records in 1956.  The house was sporadically occupied until purchased in 1964 by the Danish government and given to the Kenyan government as an independence gift.

The government set up a college of nutrition and the Museum was initially used as the principal's house. In 1985 the shooting of a movie based on Karen's autobiography began and the National Museums of Kenya expressed acquired the house for the purpose of establishing a Museum. The Museum was opened in 1986.

The Karen Blixen house meets three of the customary criteria for  historical significance.  First, it is associated with the broad historical pattern of European settlement and cultivation of East Africa. Second, it is associated with the life of a person significant to our past as the home of  Baroness Karen Blixen from 1917 -1931.  As such, it served as the setting and basis of her well known book Out of Africa, written under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen and as a gathering place for other well known personalities of the period.  Third, the building embodies the distinctive characteristics of its type, period and method of construction.  The house's architecture is typical of late 19th century bungalow architecture, including the spacious rooms, horizontal layout verandas, tile roof and stone construction typical of scores of residences built throughout European suburbs of Nairobi in early decades.

OPENING HOURS

09.30-18.00 daily, all year.

The Museum provides guided tours, but visitors can also look round the rooms by themselves. Special arrangements by appointment. The Museum does not have a café, but there is a good restaurant nearby.