The Ateneum Art museum appears on nearly every list of must-sees in Helsinki for good reason. Its grand halls and sculpture-adorned façade make it a sight worth seeing, but don’t stop at merely admiring the exterior.  Within its ornate walls is an unmissable experience for visitors; nowhere else can you enjoy such a thorough perspective of […]

Statues and sculptures abound throughout Helsinki, and these statues tell interesting stories that are often lost on passersby. Now, Helsinki has developed an innovative way of telling you the stories behind each statue – by letting the statue do the talking! Currently there are fifteen statues which have this feature. When you visit the statue […]

Profane art (or secular art) had its hesitant origin in Finland in the 18th century Isak Wacklin’s rococo portraits and in Nils Schillmark’s paintings, which employed the Neoclassical idiom. Elias Martin’s landscape paintings documenting the fortification of Viapori represent a unique curiosity from the same period. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Finnish artists absorbed influences from the […]

The influence of plein-air painting The adoption of the plein-air method drove Finnish artists out into the midst of the peasantry and into the natural landscape. Artists, who usually had an upper-class background, began to make excursions into the “original Finland” that was supposed to lie in the forest wilderness of Karelia. Romanticism Landscape painting […]

Helsinki has a diverse range of museums, galleries and private art collections and here we present 35 for you to choose from. Pick your favourite for a day out, or even just for an afternoon excursion. Or work your way through our list and decide afterwards which one is your favourite! Either way, you will […]

The past few years have seen the rise of Finnish illustrators in the world of Finnish design. The hottest names now include Sanna Annukka, whose colourful work uses Finnish folkloristic themes. You may have seen her work in products by Marimekko, Mark&Spencer’s and Vogue. The Amsterdam-based Kustaa Saksi has designed illustrations for Jennifer Lopez’s Justsweet fashion brand and Issey […]