If travel books and Google are to be believed, the first thing any visitor to Helsinki should do is take a ferry to the historic fortress of Suomenlinna and then check out an underground rock church – and why not munch on blueberries and Carelian pies while doing it. Those sites are iconic for a reason, of course, and...

If you don’t feel like you belong in the mainstream, you will feel right at home in Helsinki – especially when you know where to go. The capital of Finland has always had plenty of room for the underground – be it the punk or student activist movement, minority rights groups, or just people who don’t feel like they...

Don’t even try to keep up with the dizzying speed at which Helsinki is transforming itself. Love or hate the seismic shift in identity and appearance, it is undeniable that wherever you go, the Finnish capital is getting a fundamental facelift. Adhering to the old adage that change is always fashionably late, it often...

There was a time when it looked like the curtains had all but closed on Helsinki’s art-house cinemas. One by one, the independents that were loved and revered by film buffs and culture vultures began to shut their doors. Not even the historic Maxim was safe. It seemed inevitable that the popcorn-munching multiplexes...