Helsinki

The heart of the Russian-era capital was laid out by the German architect Carl Ludvig Engel, and its unified neoclassical ensemble is one of the finest in northern Europe. On four sides stand the Government Palace, the main building of the University of Helsinki, the old shops and houses of the merchants, and, at the top of a broad flight of steps, the white, green-domed Lutheran cathedral, completed in 1852. A statue of Tsar Alexander II, who was popular here for widening Finnish autonomy, still stands in the middle of the square.

The cathedral's interior is strikingly plain after the drama outside, with white walls and only a few statues of reformers. The real reward is the steps themselves, a favourite place to sit in the evening sun and the stage for New Year's celebrations and the Christmas market in December.

TipThe square is at its most photogenic early in the morning or in the blue light after a winter sunset, when the cathedral is floodlit.

On a rocky hill on the Katajanokka peninsula, a short walk east, the red-brick Uspenski Cathedral is a reminder of the century of Russian rule. Finished in 1868, it is often described as the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe, its thirteen golden onion domes visible from across the harbour. Inside, candlelight flickers over a richly gilded iconostasis. From the hill's terrace you look down on the market, the ferries and the cathedral you have just left.

TipThis is a working church, so dress modestly and expect it to close to visitors during services and special events.

Kauppatori, the harbourside market square, has orange-tented stalls selling berries, new potatoes, smoked fish, reindeer skins and souvenirs, and small cafés where you can eat fried Baltic herring or salmon soup at outdoor tables while gulls watch for an opening. In summer it is busy from early morning; in winter the stalls thin out, but a few hardy coffee tents remain. The obelisk with the double-headed eagle commemorates a visit by the Russian empress in 1833.

Just along the quay, the Old Market Hall of 1889 is a long brick building with carved wooden stalls inside, selling cheese, cured meats, Finnish rye bread, cinnamon buns and fish. It is a good place for a cheap lunch, especially salmon soup, and for picking up rye crisps and berry jams to take home.

TipGuard your food on the outdoor terraces. Helsinki's gulls are bold and quick, and snatching a herring straight off a plate is a daily occurrence.

Floating beside the market on a deck between the ferry piers, Allas is a pool and sauna complex with a view of the Presidential Palace, the cathedral domes and the harbour. There is a heated pool of around 27°C and an unheated pool of filtered sea water, which hovers around 11°C or colder, plus several saunas looking out over the water. It is open all year and makes an easy introduction to Finnish sauna life for visitors who only have an hour to spare.

TipSwimming time ends shortly before closing, so arrive with at least an hour in hand. Bring a swimsuit; towels can be rented.

Spread across a cluster of islands at the mouth of the harbour, Suomenlinna is a vast sea fortress begun by the Swedes in 1748 to guard against Russian expansion, then captured by Russia in 1808. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but also a living district where around 800 people have homes. Walk the grassy ramparts, cannon emplacements and star-shaped bastions to the King's Gate, poke into the low tunnels, and watch the huge cruise ships squeeze through the narrow channel to Tallinn and Stockholm. The Suomenlinna Museum tells the fortress's story, and in summer the Second World War submarine Vesikko and several smaller museums open too.

The HSL ferry leaves from Market Square all year, takes about 15 minutes, and accepts ordinary public transport tickets, since the islands lie in zone A. Entry to the fortress area itself is free. In summer a separate waterbus with its own tickets also makes the crossing.

TipBuy your ticket before boarding, from a machine or the HSL app, as tickets are not sold on the ferry. Pack a picnic and stay for sunset on the southern cliffs.

Back on the mainland, the Esplanadi is a long, tree-lined park running west from the harbour, flanked by elegant boulevards of shops. Havis Amanda, a bronze fountain nymph of 1908, stands at the harbour end, where students crown her with a white cap on the eve of May Day. The park's bandstand hosts free concerts in summer, and the glass-fronted Kappeli café has served coffee here since the nineteenth century. The north side is the place to browse Finnish design names such as Marimekko, Iittala and Artek, and the Stockmann department store anchors the far end.

South and west of the Esplanadi, the streets of Punavuori, Kaartinkaupunki and Ullanlinna make up the Design District, a loose network of independent fashion boutiques, vintage shops, galleries, furniture showrooms and cafés, many marked with a sticker in the window. Iso Roobertinkatu, a pedestrian street, makes a good spine. The Design Museum, in a turreted former school, traces Finnish design from the 1870s to the present, and the Museum of Finnish Architecture shares the site.

TipMany small shops open late in the morning and close on Sundays, so plan a weekday afternoon here.

On the Hernesaari shore, Löyly is a striking timber-clad building of angular slats, opened in 2016, that houses public saunas, including a traditional smoke sauna, and a restaurant. A standard visit lasts two hours and costs €29, with towel and toiletries included; the saunas are mixed, so swimsuits are worn throughout. Between rounds you can climb down the steps straight into the Baltic, even in winter when a hole is kept open in the ice.

For an older, more local experience, the wood-heated Kotiharju sauna in Kallio has been running since 1928, and patrons cool off on the pavement outside wrapped in towels. Many swimming halls also have saunas included in the entry price.

TipBook Löyly online, especially for evenings and weekends; cancellations need 24 hours' notice.

Facing the railway station square, the Ateneum, opened in 1887, is Finland's national gallery of older art and the best introduction to the country's soul. Its core is the so-called Golden Age of Finnish painting around 1900: Akseli Gallen-Kallela's scenes from the Kalevala epic, Albert Edelfelt's luminous portraits and Helene Schjerfbeck's spare, haunting faces. There are also works by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne. Admission is around €21 to €23 for adults and free for under-18s.

TipBuying online is a little cheaper than at the desk. The Helsinki Card and the Finnish Museum Card both include entry.

Opened in December 2018, the city's central library is a wave of spruce and glass facing Parliament across Kansalaistori square, and a fine example of Finland's belief in public space. The ground floor is a covered town square with a café and cinema; the middle floor has recording studios, sewing machines, 3D printers and laser cutters anyone can book; the top floor is a vast white reading room under a rippling ceiling, with living trees and a terrace overlooking the square. Entry is free, and it is open daily into the evening.

TipThe top-floor terrace is one of the best free viewpoints in the centre, and the toilets and seating make Oodi a welcome warm-up stop in winter.

Across the square, the curving, aluminium-clad Kiasma, designed by the American architect Steven Holl and opened in 1998, is the national museum of contemporary art. Exhibitions change regularly and range from installation and video to painting and performance, by Finnish and international artists. The ground-floor café spills onto the square in summer. Kiasma is closed on Mondays and has late opening until 8pm on Tuesdays and Fridays.

One of Helsinki's most playful buildings sits mostly underground. Amos Rex opened in 2018 beneath the Lasipalatsi, a functionalist "glass palace" from 1936, and its galleries are lit by skylights that bulge up through the square above as grassy, porthole-studded domes, which children (and adults) treat as climbing frames. Exhibitions tend towards immersive and digital art alongside modern classics.

In the middle of busy Narinkka square, beside the Kamppi shopping centre, stands a curved, windowless bowl of spruce wood. Built in 2012, when Helsinki was World Design Capital, the Kamppi Chapel of Silence is not used for services; it is simply a place to step out of the crowds and sit quietly. Soft light falls from a ring around the ceiling onto simple wooden pews, and the hush after the noise outside is remarkable. Entry is free.

In the residential Töölö district, the brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen blasted a church straight into a granite outcrop, and it opened in 1969. From outside you see little more than a rough stone wall and a low copper dome; inside, the walls are raw, unhewn rock, and daylight pours in through a ring of glass between the stone and a ceiling coiled with copper strips. The acoustics are excellent and concerts are held here often. Adult tickets cost €8 and can be bought at the door or online.

TipThe church closes to visitors during the Sunday morning service, weddings and other ceremonies, and hours are published week by week, so check before walking out.

In Sibelius Park, near the shore of Töölö Bay, Eila Hiltunen's 1967 tribute to Finland's greatest composer is made of more than 600 welded steel pipes rising like an abstract organ or a frozen waterfall, with a bronze mask of Jean Sibelius set to one side. It caused heated debate when unveiled and is now one of the most visited sights in the city. Go on a windy day and the pipes faintly hum. The red-painted Regatta café, a tiny wooden hut on the shore nearby, is famous for its cinnamon buns and outdoor fire.

Reached by a white wooden footbridge, the forested island of Seurasaari holds an open-air museum founded in 1909, with farmsteads, manor houses, cottages and a seventeenth-century church moved here from all over Finland to show how rural people lived over four centuries. Guides in period dress demonstrate crafts in summer. The museum buildings open from mid-May to mid-September, but the island itself, with its rocky shores, red squirrels and walking paths, is free to wander all year.

TipOn Midsummer's Eve, Seurasaari hosts the city's best-known bonfire celebration, with folk dancing and boats; tickets sell out.

Less than an hour from the centre, Nuuksio is a wilderness of spruce forest, bare rocky ridges, bogs and dozens of small lakes, and a good chance to feel the "everyman's right" to roam that Finns hold dear. Marked trails of a couple of kilometres up to a full day loop around lakes such as Haukkalampi, with fire pits and lean-to shelters along the way. The park is a stronghold of the shy Siberian flying squirrel, whose image appears on Finland's national park signs, and in late summer the forest floor is thick with blueberries and lingonberries.

The Haltia nature centre, at the park's southern edge, has exhibitions on Finnish nature, a restaurant and trail information. To get there by public transport, take a commuter train to Espoo centre and change to the 245 bus (245A in summer, when it runs on to Kattila trailhead). Haltia lies in fare zone C, so an ABC ticket covers the trip from central Helsinki.

TipBring water, snacks and good shoes; the trails are rocky and roots get slippery after rain. In winter, check daylight hours carefully, as darkness falls around 3.30pm in December.

About an hour east of Helsinki by bus from Kamppi, Porvoo is one of Finland's oldest towns and its most photographed. The old town climbs a hillside above the river, a maze of cobbled lanes and pastel wooden houses, crowned by a medieval stone cathedral where Tsar Alexander I met the Finnish estates in 1809 to accept Finland into his empire. The image everyone comes for is the row of rust-red wooden shore houses along the river bank, best seen from the old bridge.

The town has craft shops, antique dealers, chocolate makers and cafés, and is the place to try a Runeberg torte, an almond and rum cake named after the national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, whose home here is now a museum. Buses run every day of the year, and in summer a boat trip along the archipelago coast makes a scenic alternative.

TipArrive in the morning before the coach tours, or stay the night to see the lanes empty out in the evening.