Helsinki

Helsinki's monumental heart is Senate Square, a serene neoclassical composition laid out in the early 19th century. Rising above it on a broad flight of steps is the white, green-domed Helsinki Cathedral, the city's defining landmark and a wonderful spot to sit and watch the city. The square is framed by the matching government palace, the university and the oldest stone building in the centre. A short walk toward the harbour brings the contrasting Uspenski Cathedral, the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe, its red brick and golden onion domes a reminder of the eastern influences on Finnish history, perched on a rocky hill with harbour views. Down at the waterfront, the Market Square (Kauppatori) bustles with stalls of berries, crafts and food, and the wonderful Old Market Hall (Vanha Kauppahalli) is the place for a bowl of creamy salmon soup — one of the dishes set out on the Finland food guide. From the market quays, ferries depart for Suomenlinna and the islands.

Helsinki is a global design capital, and the theme runs through the whole city. The Design District — a cluster of streets around Punavuori and Korkeavuorenkatu — gathers independent studios, galleries, vintage and homeware shops, anchored by the excellent Design Museum that traces Finland's outsized influence on 20th-century design, from Alvar Aalto's furniture and glass to the bold prints of Marimekko and the glassware of Iittala. There is a reason the city reads so differently from Stockholm or Oslo: the pale neoclassical core was laid out in the early nineteenth century in the imperial manner of its period, so the centre looks eastward in style, and the deliberate turn afterwards to stripped-down, function-first modernism became the national idiom. The city's architecture is itself a gallery: Eliel Saarinen's National Romantic Central Station and National Museum, the modernist masterpieces of Aalto, and a striking new generation of public buildings — the wood-clad Oodi central library, a beloved civic living room; the curving, skylit Amos Rex art museum beneath a city square; the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art; and the serene, windowless Kamppi Chapel of Silence. The unusual Temppeliaukio “Rock Church”, hewn into solid granite and roofed with a copper dome, is a unique and atmospheric stop.

No Finnish experience is complete without a sauna, and Helsinki makes it easy for visitors. The sauna is central to Finnish life, and the city's public saunas range from the architect-designed, seaside Löyly — with its terraces and a ladder straight into the Baltic — to the historic, wood-heated Kotiharjun in Kallio and the new Allas Sea Pool right by the Market Square, where heated and Baltic-temperature pools sit beside the harbour. The ritual of heat followed by a cold plunge into the sea, even through a hole in winter ice, is the heart of it, and what that ritual actually involves — the löyly, the birch whisk, the etiquette — is set out on the sauna guide. The sea is everywhere in summer: harbour and island swimming spots, the beaches of Hietaniemi and the islands of Pihlajasaari and Seurasaari (an open-air museum island of old timber buildings), and the whole archipelago opening up to ferries and small boats. Cycling and walking the long, green seaside paths is one of the great pleasures of a Helsinki summer.

Helsinki's standout excursion is Suomenlinna, the “fortress of Finland” — a great sea fortress spread across a cluster of islands at the harbour mouth, built in the 18th century and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a living neighbourhood. The short public ferry from the Market Square (a regular commuter route, not a tour) drops you among grassy ramparts, tunnels, old cannons, museums, cafés and sea views; a few hours wandering the islands, with a picnic or a brewery lunch, is one of the best things to do in the city, summer or winter. Back on the mainland, the Sibelius Monument in its waterside park honours Finland's great composer, the hilltop café and observation deck atop a former water tower give a city panorama, and the district of Kallio offers a younger bar and café scene. Helsinki is also a springboard north — to the Finnish Lakeland, and to Lapland for the Northern Lights, huskies and Santa in winter, which the Lapland guide sets out properly — and a short, high-speed ferry hop across the Gulf to the medieval old town of Tallinn in Estonia for an easy day trip. Closer to hand, about an hour east by road and reachable by boat in summer, Porvoo is Finland's second-oldest town — a river frontage of red-ochre wooden storehouses, cobbled lanes climbing to a hillside church, and the excursion Finns themselves tend to recommend before any of the others.