Can You Pick Helsinki?
Six rounds of Helsinki landmarks against the Nordic and Baltic buildings people confuse them with. Four photos a round, and one round is a trap.
Helsinki was rebuilt twice - as a Russian imperial capital in the 1800s and as a Nordic one after 2000 - so most of its landmarks have a relative abroad.
Four buildings. One of them is in Helsinki.
Six rounds, four photographs each, and no captions until you have picked one.
Helsinki was rebuilt in the 1800s as a Russian imperial capital and again after 2000 as a Nordic one. Both times it ended up with relatives abroad.
Level 1 - the postcards The two churches every visitor photographs. Both have close relatives further east, which is not an accident.
Pick the Tuomiokirkko.
Count the domes. Helsinki Cathedral has five - one large, four small at the corners - and the walls are white render rather than stone.
Pick Uspenskin katedraali.
Red brick. It is the only one of the four not rendered or faced in pale stone, and the brick is what makes it recognisable from across the harbour.
Level 2 - the new city Helsinki since 2000, against everywhere else in the Nordics since 2000. These have aged into each other.
Pick Oodi.
Wood. Oodi's underside is spruce, and it curves up off the ground like a hull. Every other building in that grid is glass, steel or white panel.
Pick Kampin kappeli.
All four of those are in Helsinki, which is the trap. The chapel is the one with no windows at all - a solid drum of stained spruce battens, because the point of it is to shut the square out.
Pick Finlandia-talo.
White stone, not glass. Aalto clad it in Carrara marble and broke the mass into stepped blocks, so it reads as several shapes leaning together rather than one clean volume.
Level 3 - the old city One round left, and it is the one that tells you whether you have actually stood in these places.
Pick Senaatintori.
Size and emptiness. Senate Square is a single planned composition from the 1820s, so it is huge, uniform and bare. The other three are medieval squares that grew building by building.
0/6
Stadilainen
Six out of six. You are not recognising these from a guidebook - you know which side of the harbour each one is on.
The round that usually breaks a perfect score is the fourth, where all four photographs are Helsinki and the instinct to look for the odd one out works against you.
0/6
Vakiokävijä
Four or five. The postcards are solid and the modern buildings are where it slipped, which is the usual shape - Oodi, Kiasma and Amos Rex all went up recently enough that they are not in most people's mental picture of the city yet.
Worth knowing for next time: the Finnish entry in a Nordic line-up is very often the one using wood where everyone else used glass.
0/6
Turisti
Two or three. You have the famous white cathedral and probably the red one, and after that the Baltic capitals ran together - which they genuinely do, because they were built by the same empires within a few decades of each other.
The quickest fix is the churches. Helsinki's orthodox cathedral is red brick and nothing else in the region is, so that one never has to be a guess again.
0/6
Eksyksissä
One or none, which is a more reasonable score than it looks. Six Baltic and Nordic capitals spent the nineteenth century being rebuilt by the same handful of empires and the twenty-first being rebuilt by the same handful of architects.
Start with two facts and you will beat this next time: the cathedral is white with five green domes, and the orthodox one is red brick.
What each one actually was
1 Pick the Tuomiokirkko.
- Tuomiokirkko - Helsinki - correct answer
- Right. Helsinki Cathedral, finished in 1852 as the centrepiece of a city that had just been made a capital. White walls, five green domes, and a bank of steps that works as the city's biggest bench.
- Vilnius Cathedral - Lithuania
- The same white neoclassical language, and it catches almost everyone. But the bell tower stands apart from the building, and there is no dome at all.
- Kazan Cathedral - St Petersburg
- One dome, not five, and it is grey stone rather than white render. The family resemblance is real - Helsinki was rebuilt as a Russian imperial capital, by architects working in the same style.
- Frederik's Church - Copenhagen
- The green dome is the right colour and the wrong shape - far wider and heavier, sitting on a ring of columns. Copenhagen, not Helsinki.
The tell Count the domes. Helsinki Cathedral has five - one large, four small at the corners - and the walls are white render rather than stone.
2 Pick Uspenskin katedraali.
- Uspenskin katedraali - Helsinki - correct answer
- Right. Red brick is the tell, and it is the largest orthodox church in northern Europe - a leftover of the century when Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia.
- Alexander Nevsky - Tallinn
- Same era, same empire, same purpose - but rendered white with black domes. It sits on Toompea hill in Tallinn, about eighty kilometres south.
- Savior on Blood - St Petersburg
- The domes give it away: patterned and multicoloured, in the old Russian revival style. Uspenski is plain gold on green.
- Nativity Cathedral - Riga
- Riga. Domes rather than onions, and the whole thing is pale stone - no brick anywhere on it.
The tell Red brick. It is the only one of the four not rendered or faced in pale stone, and the brick is what makes it recognisable from across the harbour.
3 Pick Oodi.
- Oodi - Helsinki - correct answer
- Right. Oodi, the central library, opened in 2018 and promptly became the building Helsinki shows people. That timber belly is spruce, and the top floor is a free living room with a view of parliament.
- Deichman Bjørvika - Oslo
- Oslo's central library, and the same idea at the same moment - but white panel and glass, with nothing timber about it.
- Dokk1 - Aarhus
- Aarhus. A flat blue-glass slab that spreads sideways rather than curving up off the ground.
- Oslo Opera House
- Not a library at all. It is the Oslo opera house, and the giveaway is that the roof runs into the water as a walkable ramp.
The tell Wood. Oodi's underside is spruce, and it curves up off the ground like a hull. Every other building in that grid is glass, steel or white panel.
4 Pick Kampin kappeli.
- Kampin kappeli - Helsinki - correct answer
- Right. The Chapel of Silence on Narinkkatori, a curved drum of stained spruce with no windows, built so that people can step out of the busiest square in the country and hear nothing.
- Kiasma - Helsinki
- Also Helsinki - all four of these are. Kiasma is the contemporary art museum, and its curve is a metal roof over a big glass wall rather than a solid wooden wall.
- Amos Rex - Helsinki
- Helsinki again. The gallery itself is underground; what you can see are the domed skylights pushing up through Lasipalatsi square, which children treat as a climbing frame.
- Temppeliaukio - Helsinki
- The rock church, and the fourth Helsinki building here. It was quarried down into solid granite, so from the street it is a low copper disc in a rock outcrop - nearly all of it is below you.
The tell All four of those are in Helsinki, which is the trap. The chapel is the one with no windows at all - a solid drum of stained spruce battens, because the point of it is to shut the square out.
5 Pick Finlandia-talo.
- Finlandia-talo - Helsinki - correct answer
- Right. Alvar Aalto's concert hall, finished in 1971 and clad in Carrara marble - a decision that has needed the facade replaced more than once, because marble warps in this climate.
- Operaen - Copenhagen
- Copenhagen. That enormous flat roof hanging out over the harbour is nothing like Aalto - it is all one gesture, and it is on an island in the middle of the water.
- Harpa - Reykjavík
- Reykjavík. Dark faceted glass rather than white stone, and the whole building reads as one crystalline block.
- Musikhuset - Aarhus
- Aarhus. A glass box on a regular grid - no marble, and none of Aalto's stepped, irregular massing.
The tell White stone, not glass. Aalto clad it in Carrara marble and broke the mass into stepped blocks, so it reads as several shapes leaning together rather than one clean volume.
6 Pick Senaatintori.
- Senaatintori - Helsinki - correct answer
- Right. Senate Square, laid out by Carl Ludvig Engel in the 1820s as the centre of the new capital. It is deliberately vast, deliberately plain, and almost entirely one architect's work.
- Stortorget - Stockholm
- Stockholm's old square, and the opposite of Helsinki's: small, tight, and ringed with narrow painted merchant houses from several centuries at once.
- Raekoja plats - Tallinn
- Tallinn town hall square. Medieval, gabled, and always full of stalls - Senate Square is empty by design.
- Rātslaukums - Riga
- Riga. The House of the Blackheads, a stepped Dutch-style gable covered in ornament - nothing in Senate Square is decorated like that.
The tell Size and emptiness. Senate Square is a single planned composition from the 1820s, so it is huge, uniform and bare. The other three are medieval squares that grew building by building.
Phrases in this quiz
| Finnish | What it does |
|---|---|
| tuomiokirkko | cathedral - the white one on Senate Square, and the shorthand every local uses |
| Uspenskin katedraali | the red-brick orthodox cathedral above Katajanokka |
| Oodi | the central library, and the building Helsinki shows visitors first |
| Kampin kappeli | the Chapel of Silence - a windowless wooden drum on the busiest square in Finland |
| Temppeliaukio | the rock church, quarried down into solid granite |
| Finlandia-talo | Alvar Aalto's marble concert hall |
| Senaatintori | Senate Square - the planned centre of the new capital |
| Stadi | Helsinki, in Helsinki slang - from the Swedish stad, a city |
About this quiz
Every photograph is documentary work by a named photographer under a free licence, credited under each tile once the round is answered. None of them are generated.
The wrong answers are all real buildings in real cities, chosen because they are the ones people actually mix Helsinki up with - not because they were convenient. Round four is the exception, and it says so when you get there.
Questions people ask
What is the white cathedral in Helsinki called?
Helsingin tuomiokirkko - Helsinki Cathedral, usually just tuomiokirkko. It was finished in 1852 to Carl Ludvig Engel's design, stands at the top of Senate Square, and has one large green dome with four smaller ones at the corners.
What is the red brick church in Helsinki?
Uspenskin katedraali, the Uspenski Cathedral, on the Katajanokka side of the harbour. It was completed in 1868 and is the largest orthodox church in northern Europe - a survival from the century when Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire.
Why does Helsinki look like St Petersburg?
Because it was partly built to. After Finland passed from Sweden to Russia in 1809, Helsinki was made the capital and rebuilt on an imperial plan, with Engel working in the same neoclassical idiom as St Petersburg. The resemblance was close enough that Cold War films regularly used Helsinki to stand in for Soviet cities.
What is Oodi?
Helsinki's central library, opened in December 2018 opposite the parliament building. The curved underside is spruce, the top floor is an open reading room, and entry is free - it is the building the city tends to show visitors first.
What is the Chapel of Silence?
Kampin kappeli, a small windowless chapel on Narinkkatori square, opened in 2012 to a design by Mikko Summanen of K2S. The facade is stained spruce batten and the room inside is lined in black alder. It holds no services in the usual sense; it exists so that people can step off the busiest square in Finland into somewhere quiet.
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