Helsinki

King Gustav I of Sweden founded Helsingfors on 12 June 1550 as a trading town to rival Reval, today's Tallinn, across the gulf. For a long time it stayed small, troubled by poverty, war and disease. In 1640 Count Per Brahe moved the town to the Vironniemi peninsula by the sea — today's Kruununhaka, where Senate Square stands. The wooden town burned repeatedly, and the plague of 1710 killed most of its people. From 1748 Sweden built the Sveaborg fortress on the islands offshore, but in the Finnish War of 1808 it surrendered to Russia after a two-month siege, and about a quarter of the town was destroyed by fire that year.

Russia turned the town into a capital. Emperor Alexander I moved Finland's capital here from Turku on 8 April 1812, to bring it closer to St Petersburg and reduce Swedish influence, and Carl Ludvig Engel designed a new neoclassical centre around Senate Square. After the great fire of Turku in 1827 the country's only university moved here too. Industry and railways followed, and by the 1910s the population passed 100,000, with Finnish- and Swedish-speakers in roughly equal numbers at the start of the century.

After independence and the civil war of 1918, the city prepared for the 1940 Olympics, which the war cancelled. The Games came in 1952 instead, a landmark for a country recovering from the Winter and Continuation Wars. Between 1944 and 1969 the population nearly doubled, and the metro opened in 1982. Helsinki hosted the first CSCE summit in 1975, the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 and was World Design Capital in 2012; new towers in Kalasatama include Majakka, completed in 2019 and the first skyscraper in Finland.

Helsinki is a bilingual city — Helsingfors in Swedish — with Finnish- and Swedish-language schools, theatres and parishes; of its 21 Lutheran congregations, three are Swedish-speaking. The city also has its own old slang, stadin slangi, Finnish laced with Swedish, German and Russian loanwords, and about a fifth of its residents have a foreign background, twice the national average.

Architecture and design are central to the city's image. Engel's empire-style centre, the National Romantic and Art Nouveau buildings of the early 1900s, the functionalist Olympic venues and recent landmarks such as Oodi and Amos Rex sit within a short walk of each other. The World Design Capital jury in 2012 pointed to Nokia, Kone and Marimekko and to the annual Helsinki Design Week. The Ateneum, Kiasma and the Helsinki Festival keep a busy arts calendar, and Flow brings international music to an old power station every August.

The year has clear peaks. On the evening of 30 April students cap the Havis Amanda statue, and on 1 May Vappu picnics fill Kaivopuisto; at Midsummer the city empties to the cottages while a great bonfire burns on Seurasaari. The October herring market keeps a fair said to date from 1743. Residents are reserved and direct, value quiet on trams and in shared spaces, and treat the sauna, public or private, as an everyday habit.

About 694,000 people live in the city of Helsinki, about 1.3 million in the capital region with Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen, and about 1.6 million in the wider metropolitan area — roughly a quarter of Finland's population. Women make up 53 per cent of residents, above the national average, and about 20.8 per cent of people have a foreign background, twice the national figure.

The metropolitan area holds roughly 700,000 jobs and generates about a third of Finland's GDP; 83 of the 100 largest Finnish companies have their headquarters there, and the University of Helsinki and Aalto University are its major research universities. The Port of Helsinki became the world's busiest passenger port in 2017, counting ferry and cruise passengers together. Inner districts such as Kallio, one of the most densely populated places in the country, are full of small flats popular with students and young people; families spread into the suburbs and new towers in the east.

Restaurants serve weekday lunch sets from late morning, and evenings go to sport, sauna or the supermarket. People get around by tram, bicycle and metro, swim at city beaches in summer and at winter-swimming spots in the cold months, and leave for cottages on summer weekends. Scarce and costly housing has pushed many commuters out to towns such as Lahti, Hämeenlinna and Porvoo.

The Baltic sets much of the table. Silakka, Baltic herring, is smoked or pickled, and archipelago people sell fish from their boats at the October herring market, held at the South Harbour since 1820. Lohikeitto, salmon soup, is one of the most popular salmon dishes in Finland, the Old Market Hall by the harbour has traded since 1889, and in August many Swedish-speaking Finns hold crayfish parties. Some of the Market Square's outdoor cafés sell lihapiirakka, meat pastries.

Finnish staples appear everywhere: dark rye bread, unsweetened and even bitter, Karelian pies with a thin rye crust and a rice filling, and new potatoes at Midsummer. Café culture is strong in a country that drinks a great deal of coffee, with korvapuusti cinnamon buns and pulla sweet bread at every counter. Café Ekberg, the oldest café still operating in Finland, has baked Runeberg tortes since the 19th century, eaten nationwide on the poet's day, 5 February.

The confectioner Fazer, founded by the Helsinki-born baker Karl Fazer, makes Fazer Blue, a milk chocolate. Fine dining leans on local seafood and other local produce, while the weekday lunch set, lounas, is the cheapest way to eat out. Lonkero, originally a gin and grapefruit long drink, is a national speciality.