Explore Helsinki

Kiasma is the contemporary art museum of the Finnish National Gallery, on Mannerheimintie in central Helsinki. Its curved building by the American architect Steven Holl, chosen in a 1993 competition, opened in May 1998. It shows changing exhibitions and works from a collection of some 8,000 artists, and also has a theatre stage, a café and a shop.

Amos Rex is a contemporary art museum that opened in 2018 in exhibition halls built beneath Lasipalatsi Square on Mannerheimintie in Helsinki. Designed by JKMM Architects, the halls take in daylight through domed skylights rising from the square beside the 1930s functionalist Lasipalatsi building. It is named after the publisher and patron Amos Anderson.

Ateneum is an art museum of the Finnish National Gallery on the south side of Railway Square in central Helsinki. Its building by Theodor Höijer, completed in 1887, has a sculpted facade with caryatids and busts. The collection covers Finnish art from 18th-century portraits to the 20th century and some 650 international works, among them a van Gogh.

The Hotel and Restaurant Museum covers the history of Finnish hotels, restaurants, cafés and food and drink culture. Founded in 1971 for hospitality students, it has been in the Cable Factory (Kaapelitehdas) since 1993; its exhibition Taste Matters shows menus, photographs and objects from restaurants, bars, diners and hotels.

The Seurasaari Open-Air Museum, founded in 1909 and run by the National Museum of Finland, fills the eastern and northern parts of Seurasaari island. Its 89 wooden buildings were moved here from across Finland, among them farmsteads, a manor, cottages and the late-17th-century Karuna church, and show rural life of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Suomenlinna Museum occupies building C74 on Susisaari, a mid-18th-century storehouse that also houses the fortress's visitor centre. Its permanent exhibition covers more than 270 years of the fortress, from the fortification works and the dry dock to the daily life of soldiers and residents, and a 25-minute film on its history is shown in the auditorium.