Things to do in Helsinki

Landmark · Island fortress, 15 minutes by ferry

An eighteenth-century sea fortress across six islands, a UNESCO site, and home to about 800 people who commute by boat.

Local tip: The ferry from Market Square is ordinary HSL public transport on a normal travel card, not a tour boat. Go in winter when it is empty and the sea is frozen — the ferry runs all year and breaks ice on the way.

Neighborhood · North of the centre

The traditional working-class district turned into the city's bar, sauna and second-hand quarter, with the cheapest rents close in.

Local tip: Kotiharjun Sauna on Harjutorinkatu is a genuine public wood-heated sauna dating to 1928, one of the last of its kind in the city. You sit outside on the pavement afterwards with a beer, which is entirely normal here and unnerving the first time.

Nature · Southern waterfront

A public seaside sauna with a sea-swimming platform, on a stretch of shoreline the city has been reclaiming.

Local tip: Winter swimming from the sauna's ladder is the point of the place, not a stunt — Finns do it weekly and the recovery is genuinely why. Book in advance; walk-ins on a Saturday do not work.

Culture · City centre

The nineteenth-century boulevard between the harbour and the shopping streets, with the Empire-style centre laid out around it.

Local tip: Helsinki's centre was designed to look like St Petersburg because it was built under Russian rule by the same architect's ambition — which is why Hollywood used it as a Soviet stand-in for decades. Look at the Senate Square and it stops being a coincidence.

Food · North-east of the centre

Wooden houses at Puu-Vallila, the Arabia ceramics quarter, and the tram-served corridor of small restaurants between them.

Local tip: Puu-Vallila is a surviving pocket of early-twentieth-century wooden workers' housing, half a tram ride from the centre and almost never visited. The tram 6 route through it is one of the best cheap tours of the city.

Nature · About 45 minutes north-west by bus and train

Lakes, boulder fields and old-growth forest, with marked trails and free wilderness huts, inside the Helsinki commuter area.

Local tip: Reachable on ordinary HSL transport to Espoo and then a bus — no car needed, which almost nobody realises. Finland's everyman's right lets you walk, forage and camp there, and the free lean-to shelters with firewood are maintained by the state.