5+ Highlights · Finnish Heritage Agency
World Heritage — treasures of humankind
Sea fortresses, Bronze Age burial cairns, a wooden town and lighthouse islands — visit some of Finland's UNESCO World Heritage sites, whose worth reaches far beyond its borders.
A World Heritage site is not merely of national importance — it has been recognised as significant to all of humankind. In Finland these places are few, and they could hardly be more different from one another: the Suomenlinna sea fortress still stands guard off Helsinki, the wooden quarters of Old Rauma form the largest surviving wooden town in the Nordic countries, and the quiet cairns of Sammallahdenmäki were stacked stone on stone back in the Bronze Age.
This is a journey to Finland's most exceptional places. The sites lie scattered — you will not see the lighthouse islands of the Kvarken Archipelago on the same outing as the Struve Geodetic Arc measuring point on Mustaviiri — so there is no single day-route to follow. We have gathered some of Finland's World Heritage here so that you can choose your own destination and give it the time a place like this deserves.
Highlights
Suomenlinna
Set along the approach to Helsinki, Suomenlinna is one of the world's great sea fortresses and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its history bound to Sweden, Russia and Finland from the 1700s to today.
Look for: Seek out the King's Gate on Kustaanmiekka, the country's foremost Baroque portal and the fortress's parade entrance; the Great Courtyard on Susisaari also holds Augustin Ehrensvärd's tomb monument.
Old Rauma
Old Rauma is one of Finland's six medieval-founded towns and one of the largest surviving wooden town areas in the Nordics — named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991, a maze whose roughly 250 plots and narrow lanes invite you to lose your way.
Look for: Look at the facades of the 19th-century wooden houses: the richly shaped neo-Renaissance weatherboards and mouldings speak of the era's ornament. By the square stands the baroque-classicist town hall.
Sammallahdenmäki
Rauma
Thirty-six burial cairns run for 700 metres along a rock ridge at Sammallahdenmäki, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Radiocarbon dates put the oldest at the start and middle of the Bronze Age, the youngest burial only at the beginning of the Iron Age.
Look for: Kirkonlaattia, the quadrangular cairn, is an irregular four-sided setting of piled stone; excavation gave no clear indication that it is a grave. From the cairns a fine view opens over Saarnijärvi, a sea bay in the Bronze Age.
Struven ketju / Mustaviiri
Merenkurkun saariston majakka- ja luotsisaaret
On the Kvarken world heritage islands stands a lighthouse designed by the Frenchman Henry Lepaute and built in the 1800s — the keepers' farmstead clustered around it, a record of seafaring and lighthouse engineering.
Look for: Look up at the 36-metre iron lighthouse of Valassaaret: inside its tubular core a spiral stair climbs to the top, and beneath the glass-walled lantern lies the keeper's watch room.