Helsinki travel guide

Top 10 sights in Helsinki

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Michal Pise, Michal.Pise · CC BY 2.0

   Suomenlinna

   A sea fortress on six islands begun by Sweden in 1748 against Russia, surrendered without much of a fight in 1808, and World Heritage since 1991. About eight hundred people live on it, the ferry takes fifteen minutes, and the submarine Vesikko of 1933 is beached there.

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2. 

   2© Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Helsinki Cathedral

   Engel's white neoclassical church of 1852, raised on a granite platform above the Senate Square so that its green domes close the view from the harbour. The steps in front of it are where Helsinki sits in the sun for the few weeks it gets one.

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3. 

   3© Finnish National Gallery · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ateneum

   The Finnish national gallery's historic collection, in a building of 1887, and the place where Finnish national identity was largely painted. Gallen-Kallela's Kalevala scenes and Helene Schjerfbeck's self-portraits, made across forty years as she aged, are the reasons to go.

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   4

   Senate Square

   Engel's ensemble of the 1820s to 1850s — cathedral, university, senate and a merchant's house on the fourth side — built when Russia moved the Finnish capital here and wanted it to look imperial. Cold War films used it as a stand-in for Leningrad, because it was.

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5. 

   5© Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0

   Havis Amanda

   A bronze mermaid rising from her fountain, made by Ville Vallgren in Paris and put up in the market square in 1908, to considerable outrage about her nudity. Graduating students cap her with a white student's cap on the eve of May Day, which requires waders.

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6. 

   6© Arttu Suomalainen · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Temppeliaukio Church

   A church of 1969 blasted out of a granite outcrop, so that from outside it is a copper dome sitting on bare rock and nothing else. Inside, the walls are the quarried stone and the acoustics are good enough that it is used for recording as much as for services.

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7. 

   7© No machine-readable author provided. Thermos assumed (based on copyright claims) · CC BY-SA 2.5

   National Museum of Finland

   The national museum, in a National Romantic building of 1916 by the practice that included Eliel Saarinen, with a fresco cycle by Gallen-Kallela in the entrance hall. It covers Finland from the Stone Age to the present and has been closed for an extension.

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8. 

   8© Paasikivi · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Kiasma

   Steven Holl's contemporary art museum of 1998, whose curved zinc and glass form is meant to read as a crossing of lines — the name is Finnish for chiasma. It is five minutes from the central station and the building is at least half of the visit.

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   9

   Uspenski Cathedral

   The largest Orthodox church in western Europe, finished in 1868 in red brick with gilded onion domes, built for the Russian garrison and merchants when Finland was a grand duchy of the empire. It stands on a rock above the market square, deliberately visible from the sea.

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10. 

    10© Ad Meskens · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Presidential Palace

    A merchant's house of 1820 rebuilt as the tsar's Helsinki residence and now one of the president's three official buildings. The independence day reception held in it each December is watched on television by something like a third of the country.

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1. 

   1

   Sibelius Monument

   Eila Hiltunen's monument of 1967, some six hundred welded steel tubes rising in a wave, meant to suggest organ pipes and the sound of Sibelius rather than his likeness. The abstraction caused a national argument, which is why a bust of the composer was added beside it.

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2. 

   2© Lee Vilenski · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Vesikko

   A submarine launched at the Crichton-Vulcan yard in Turku on 10 May 1933. A German front company using the name of a Dutch firm ordered her as a prototype in 1930, and she became the model for the German Type II boats; she is preserved at Suomenlinna.

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3. 

   3© Simbe · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Linnanmäki

   An amusement park opened in 1950 and owned by six children's welfare charities, which take all the profit — so the entrance is free and the rides are ticketed. Its wooden roller coaster of 1951 still runs with a brakeman aboard.

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4. 

   4© Vadelmavene · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Kamppi Chapel

   A chapel on Narinkka Square at Kamppi in Helsinki, called the chapel of silence for offering a moment of quiet in the middle of the city. The Helsinki parish union and the city social services department run it together.

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5. 

   5© Jisis · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Saint John's Church

   A Lutheran church in Helsinki designed in Gothic Revival by the Swedish architect Adolf Melander. Measured by seating it is the largest stone church in Finland, and its twin spires are visible across the southern districts.

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6. 

   6© Joni Karppinen · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Töölö

   The district west of the centre holding the parliament, Finlandia Hall, the Olympic stadium of 1938 and the rock church — effectively the civic quarter that Finland built for itself in the decades after independence.

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7. 

   7© Tuula Sipilä · CC BY 4.0

   Kauppatori

   The market square at the head of the harbour, where the fish and berry stalls stand in summer and the salmon soup tents in autumn. Ferries to Suomenlinna leave from its quay all year, and the archipelago boats in the warm months.

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   8

   Esplanadi park

   A park of 1818 laid out as a promenade between two parallel streets, with a bandstand and the Kappeli restaurant at one end. On May Day eve the whole city crowds into it, and in December it holds the Christmas market.

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9. 

   9© Saint_Henry's_Cathedral_Helsinki.jpg: Tomisti derivative work: Rabanus Flavus (t · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Pyhän Henrikin katedraali

   The Catholic cathedral of Helsinki, built in 1860 and the first Catholic church in Finland since the Reformation, dedicated to the English-born bishop who brought Christianity to Finland in the twelfth century and was killed there.

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10. 

    10© Óðinn · CC BY-SA 2.5 ca

    Government Palace

    The seat of the Finnish government, facing the Senate Square in central Helsinki. The prime minister's office, the office of the chancellor of justice and most departments of the finance ministry are in it.

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