My trip to Helsinki. Powered by Schmap
Before attending Jean Michel Jarre’s concert I have visited several museums in Helsinki.
I have been to Helsinki a few times previously. The main square on which Alexander’s Cathedral is situated is really impressive. There is a museum of history on the same square but it is not very big. Exploring Senate Square did not generate any other interesting results. Thus, I was surprised that Helsinki does not have any big museums at the central square. Where should a tourist go? Of course, there are interesting places in Helsinki I only needed to find those.
I needed a travel guide which would provide popular tourist routes as well as location of tourist attractions such as museums. Schmap is a web site that offers tourist guides as standalone applications as well as online web pages. The maps are integrated to the web site. It offers various kinds of information such as history of a city, tourist routes, lists of museums. Thus, it combines Wikipedia and Wikitravel. Also, the latter cannot show a map which I always found a limitation of wiki approach. Many popular Internet technologies are controversial in the sense that there are more powerful technologies but those are less popular. The extremely popular Wikipedia cannot combine media content. Despite being very useful anyway there is lots of room for improvement.
Here is Schmap’s guide of Helsinki. As I arrived in the afternoon, I only had three hours to attend the museums before the concert. I chose Sinebrychoff museum of foreign art and National Museum of Finland. These are must-visit places and I only wonder why I have not discovered them earlier after spending one year in Finland.
Sinebrychoff was a Russian-born beer maker. He had a gorgeous house. Once you enter it two things surprise you immediately. First, the furniture, the paintings, etc are accessible to the visitor. It is not like a museum, it is like a home as if Sinebryuhoff left 10 minutes ago. Another surprise is the candle smell. It was so common in older times but nowdays you will not find it anywhere. This creates the true atmosphere of the old times and you forget that you are in the 21st century for the duration of your visit. There is not much information on Sinebrychoff on the Internet except this web site. The art collection is absolutely fantastic. It features Italian paintings dated as long as 15th century, the pre-Leonardo times.
The other museum that I visited the National Museum of Finland is located closely to the train station. The building looks fancy like a Catholic church with a tall bell tower. The museum explains the history of Finland in very great detail. It starts with pre-historic times. It turns out that people were living here for very long time. It continues with the history of Catholic Church and how it influenced Finland through the middle ages. A special hall is dedicated to Russian Tzars, from Alexander I to Nicholas II. There is a portrait of each Tzar and a chair on which they sit during their visits to Finland. Of course, the museum describes Swedish kings as well. There are lots of paintings in this historical museum. Thus, it combines art and history or illustrates the latter with the former. This is an interesting approach to making history more engaging.
During my next trip to Helsinki I will attend other museums. So far, attending museums in Finland was a lot of fun in part because most of them deal with Russian history.