Explore Porvoo

J. L. Runeberg's Home is the wooden house where Finland's national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg lived from 1852 until his death in 1877. It opened as a museum in 1882 and keeps the family's furniture, paintings, books and descendants of Fredrika Runeberg's house plants; her restored garden lies behind the house.

Porvoo Museum, founded in 1896, occupies the Old Town Hall on the old town square, a Baroque brick building completed in 1764 with a wooden bell tower. Its exhibitions trace the history of Porvoo and Eastern Uusimaa from the Ice Age and show works by Albert Edelfelt and Ville Vallgren; Holm House, an 18th-century merchant's home, also belongs to it.

Porvoo Cathedral is a medieval stone church on the hill above the old town, built in the 15th century on the walls of an earlier 13th-century church. The first Diet of Finland opened here in 1809. Burned many times, most recently by arson in 2006, it is the seat of the Swedish-speaking Diocese of Borgå.

Old Porvoo is the historic centre of Porvoo on the bank of the Porvoo River, with a street plan from the Middle Ages and wooden houses mostly built between 1760 and 1820, after a fire destroyed much of the town. Visitors see the red storehouses along the river, cobbled lanes, the Old Town Hall square and the cathedral hill.