Historic Cities · Finland
Helsinki through the ages
Helsinki, until about 1930 known in English by its Swedish name of Helsingfors, is the capital and most populous city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About 694,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.3 million in the capital region and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area.
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Helsinki in 1750
Sveaborg's Helsinki
Helsingfors in 1750 is a small Swedish wooden town being reshaped by the new island fortress Sveaborg rising at the harbour mouth. The walk passes the fortress's bastions and dockworks, the town's low timber houses and wooden parish church, the market shore and quays, and the daily bustle where garrison officers, shipwrights and stone-cutters meet taverns and workshops.
Low timber roofs and narrow, unpaved lanes cluster on a rocky peninsula beside two busy harbours. Across the harbour a ring of stone-and-earth bastions and dry-dock works is rising on several islands, flanked by careened warships and small workboats. Colours are raw: unpainted pine, tar-black ropes, hooped barrels, and grey stone under pale northern light. The town's scale is modest; masts, scaffolds and chimneys punctuate a skyline of wood and stone.
The walk — 21 streets, squares and views
Gulf of Finland → Skata Udde → Blockholm Isles → Sveaborg Outer Bastions → Sveaborg Dockyard Quay → Careening Beach → Dry Dock Works → Glöet Bay → Södra Hamnen → Norra Hamnen → …
Step inside — 13 interiors
Casemate Barracks · Officers' Mess · Fitting Shed · Shipwrights' Mould Loft · Masons' Staging · Harbour Tavern Common Room · Parish Nave · Merchant's Low-Beamed Parlour · Fish Smokehouse · Granite Dressing Shop · Cooper's Workshop · Ropewalk Shed · Salted Fish Shed
Planned from the Wikipedia record: History of Helsinki.
Helsinki in 1900
Imperial Helsinki
This is Helsinki at the height of its life as the white, neoclassical capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland under the Russian tsar. The walk moves from the harbour and Market Square through Engel’s Senate Square and the Esplanade to Uspenski’s red-brick domes, passing horse trams, fishing boats and new granite city blocks.
The skyline is a close, northern one: Engel’s white cathedral dome and its broad steps dominate the low, pale city, red-brick onion domes of Uspenski rise at the eastern harbour, and rows of low gabled warehouses and wooden houses edge the quays. Streets are paved or cobbled, trams run on iron rails, and façades are soapstone, granite and stucco in muted creams, russets and greys; tarpaulined market stalls and fishing skiffs cluster at the frozen south harbour in winter.
The walk — 22 streets, squares and views
Approach from the Gulf → South Harbour Quay → Kauppatori (Market Square) → Harbour Fish Stalls → Katajanokka and Uspenski → Esplanadi (South End) → Esplanadi Promenade → Kappeli Pavilion → Aleksanterinkatu → Kluuvi and Midtown Blocks → …
Step inside — 14 interiors
Old Market Hall Fish Stalls · Harbour Fish Packing Shed · Uspenski Nave and Iconostasis · Hotel Drawing Room · Kappeli Café Salon · Haberdasher's Salesroom · Railway Waiting Room · Kaisaniemi Garden Café · Domed Reading Room · Great Lecture Hall · Nave of the Cathedral · Government Palace Council Chamber · Kruununhaka Tenement Parlor · Salted Fish Warehouse
Planned from the Wikipedia record: History of Helsinki.
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