All activities / Museums & Galleries / Helsinki
Museums & Galleries in Helsinki
Finland's capital on the Baltic, a compact, sea-facing city of neoclassical and Art Nouveau streets, island fortresses and a design and food culture that punches well above its size. Helsinki mixes national museums and galleries, market halls and a lively summer festival calendar with easy access to the archipelago and the surrounding forests.
Why here
Helsinki lets you take in the whole span of Finnish art within a few hundred metres of the central station. At the Ateneum, the grand nineteenth-century home of the national collection, you meet the Golden Age painters who shaped how Finland sees itself: Gallen-Kallela's dark Kalevala myths, Schjerfbeck's spare portraits, Edelfelt's light. A short walk across the square, Kiasma picks up the thread in Steven Holl's swooping white building and carries it to the present, with Finnish and international contemporary art, media and performance. Between the two you get the entire arc, from national romanticism to now, in a pair of walkable, uncrowded museums that rarely have the queues of the big Western capitals. Both run English-language tours and sit in the design-rich heart of a city that also gave the world Alvar Aalto and Marimekko.
Best months
Both museums are indoor and open year-round, so this pairing is an all-weather option and a strong choice on a cold or wet Helsinki day. Both close on Mondays and are quietest on weekday mornings; the Ateneum's blockbuster shows can be busy at weekends. Buy timed tickets online in advance for temporary exhibitions. Both offer English-language guided tours and audio guides, and both sit within a short walk of one another by the railway station.
Getting there & around
The Ateneum stands on Kaivokatu directly opposite Helsinki Central Station, and Kiasma is a two-minute walk away on Mannerheiminaukio beside the station square, so both are reachable on foot from almost anywhere in the centre and from the airport train. Trams and the metro stop alongside. Allow a half to full day for the pair. Check opening days, as both close on Mondays, and book ahead for major temporary exhibitions.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (2)
Ateneum Art Museum
OrganizerThe Ateneum is Finland's best-known art museum and part of the Finnish National Gallery, housed in an ornate 1887 building on Kaivokatu across from Helsinki's central railway station. Its collection is the national story of Finnish art, strongest in the Golden Age of the late nineteenth century, with Akseli Gallen-Kallela's Kalevala scenes, Helene Schjerfbeck, Albert Edelfelt and the Von Wright brothers, set among international works by Van Gogh and Cezanne.
Kiasma
OrganizerKiasma is the Museum of Contemporary Art within the Finnish National Gallery, in a curved, light-filled building designed by architect Steven Holl that opened on Mannerheiminaukio in 1998. Its programme is Finnish and international contemporary art across changing exhibitions, media works and performance, and its ground-floor spaces and cafe are a free public crossing point in the centre of the city, the contemporary counterweight to the Ateneum's historic collection.