Helsinki: history and heritage

About Helsinki: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Helsinki Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Helsinki has belonged to two empires and become the capital of a nation that found its voice in music, architecture and design. Its white cathedral and Senate Square were built for a Russian grand duchy; its sea fortress for the Swedish crown; and its railway station, Finlandia Hall and Oodi library for the Finland that came after.

At a glance

Population: around 680,000 in the City of Helsinki (Statistics Finland, 2024).

Names through history: Helsingfors in Swedish, Helsinki in Finnish; both are official.

Built by the Swedish crown and the Russian tsars, Helsinki became the capital of a nation that found its voice in design.

Peoples: Finns, with a Swedish-speaking minority, the Sámi in the far north of the country, and newcomers from Russia, Estonia, Somalia and beyond.

Shaped by: the Swedish realm (to 1809), the Russian Empire as the Grand Duchy of Finland (1809–1917), and independent Finland since 1917.

A Swedish town

King Gustav I of Sweden founded Helsingfors in 1550 at the mouth of the Vantaa river, as a trading rival to Tallinn across the Gulf. The town moved to its present peninsula in 1640. For centuries Finland was part of the Swedish realm, and Swedish remained the language of government and learning long after.

Suomenlinna

In 1748 Sweden began building the sea fortress of Sveaborg, now Suomenlinna, on a group of islands off the harbour, to defend against Russia. It is one of the largest sea fortresses in Europe and has been UNESCO World Heritage since 1991; about 800 people live there today, a short ferry ride from Market Square.

The grand duchy

In 1809 Russia took Finland from Sweden, and in 1812 the tsar made Helsinki the capital of the new Grand Duchy of Finland. The architect Carl Ludvig Engel designed the Empire-style centre around Senate Square, with the Cathedral (completed 1852), the Government Palace and the University, which moved here from Turku in 1828. The red-brick Uspenski Cathedral (1868) recalls the Orthodox faith of the Russian court. In the nineteenth century the Finnish language found its voice: the Kalevala, the national epic compiled by Elias Lönnrot, was published in 1835.

Independence

Finland declared independence on 6 December 1917. Eliel Saarinen’s granite Central Station, opened in 1919, became the symbol of the new national romantic style, and the music of Jean Sibelius, above all Finlandia, its voice. Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympics in 1952.

The design capital

Alvar Aalto’s Finlandia Hall (1971), the Temppeliaukio Church cut into rock (1969), the Kamppi Chapel of Silence (2012) and the Oodi Central Library (2018) carry on a tradition of clean, humane design, and the Design District’s studios and shops show it at street level. Helsinki was World Design Capital in 2012.

Our advice: take the public ferry to Suomenlinna in the morning, return for a salmon soup at the Old Market Hall, then walk from Senate Square to the Central Station and on to Oodi: two centuries of Helsinki in an afternoon.

Sources

Population: Statistics Finland, population structure. History: Helsinki City Museum; Governing Body of Suomenlinna; UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Fortress of Suomenlinna); Finnish National Gallery; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Helsinki”.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Helsinki: history and heritage before you go.