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Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city's urban area has a population of , making it by far the most populous urban area in Finland as well as the country's most important center for politics, education, finance, culture, and research; while Tampere in the Pirkanmaa region, located to the north from Helsinki, is the second largest urban area in Finland. Helsinki is located north of Tallinn, Estonia, east of Stockholm, Sweden, and west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has close historical ties with these three cities.

Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen (and surrounding commuter towns, including the eastern neighboring municipality of Sipoo), Helsinki forms the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, which has a population of over 1.5 million. Often considered to be Finland's only metropolis, it is the world's northernmost metro area with over one million people as well as the northernmost capital of an EU member state. After Copenhagen and Stockholm, Helsinki is the third largest municipality in the Nordic countries. Finnish and Swedish are both official languages. The city is served by the international Helsinki Airport, located in the neighboring city of Vantaa, with frequent service to many destinations in Europe and Asia.

Helsinki was the World Design Capital for 2012, the venue for the 1952 Summer Olympics, and the host of the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007.

Helsinki has one of the world's highest standards of urban living. In 2011, the British magazine ''Monocle'' ranked Helsinki the world's most liveable city in its liveable cities index. In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2016 liveability survey, Helsinki was ranked ninth among 140 cities. In July 2021, the American magazine ''Time'' ranked Helsinki one of the greatest places in the world in 2021 as a city that "can grow into a sprouting cultural nest in the future," and which has already been known in the world as an environmental pioneer. An international ''Cities of Choice'' survey conducted in 2021 by the consulting firm Boston Consulting Group and the BCG Henderson Institute raised Helsinki the third best city in the world to live, with London and New York City ranking the first and the second. Also, together with Rovaniemi in the Lapland region, Helsinki is one of Finland's most significant tourist cities in terms of foreign tourism. Due to the large number of sea passengers per year, Helsinki is classed as a Large-Port City .

Etymology

According to a theory presented in the 1630s, at the time of Swedish colonisation of coastal areas of Finland, colonists from Hälsingland in central Sweden had arrived at what is now known as the Vantaa River and called it ''Helsingå'' ("Helsinge River"), which gave rise to the names of Helsinge village and church in the 1300s. This theory is questionable, because dialect research suggests that the settlers arrived from Uppland and nearby areas. Others have proposed the name as having been derived from the Swedish word ''helsing'', an archaic form of the word ''hals'' (neck), referring to the narrowest part of a river, the rapids. Other Scandinavian cities at similar geographic locations were given similar names at the time, e.g. Helsingør in Denmark and Helsingborg in Sweden.

When a town was founded in Forsby village (later known as ''Koskela'') in 1548, it was named ''Helsinge fors'', "Helsinge rapids". The name refers to the rapids at the mouth of the river. The town was commonly known as ''Helsinge'' or ''Helsing'', from which the contemporary Finnish name arose.

Official Finnish Government documents and Finnish language newspapers have used the name ''Helsinki'' since 1819, when the Senate of Finland moved itself into the city from Turku, the former capital of Finland. The decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish. As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, Helsinki was known as ''Gel'singfors'' (Гельсингфорс) in Russian.

In Helsinki slang, the city is called ''Stadi'' (from the Swedish word ''stad'', meaning "city"). People from other areas of Finland might use ''Hesa'' (short for Helsinki). ' is the Northern Sami name of Helsinki.

History

Early history

Since the end of the Ice Age, after the retreat of the ice cover, first colonizers came to the area around Helsinki at about 5000 BC. Their presence was documented by archeologists in Vantaa, Pitäjänmäki and Kaarela.
Permanent settlements appeared only at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, in the Iron Age, when the area was inhabited by Tavastians. They used the area for fishing and hunting, but due to a lack of archeological finds it is difficult to say how extensive their settlements were. Pollen analysis has shown that there were cultivating settlements in the area in the 10th century and surviving historical records from the 14th century describe Tavastian settlements in the area.

The early settlements were raided by Vikings, later substituted by Christianized colonists from Sweden. They arrived mostly from the Swedish coastal regions of Norrland and Hälsingland, which especially intensified by the years of 1100. Swedes colonized the coastline of the Helsinki region permanently in the late 13th century after the successful Second Crusade to Finland, which led to the defeat of the Tavastians.

Written chronicles of 1417 mentioned Koskela village near the rapids close to the mouth of the Vantaa River, near which Helsinki would be founded.

Founding of Helsinki

Helsinki was established as a trading town by King Gustav I of Sweden in 12 June 1550, as the town of Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval on the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland (today known as Tallinn). In order to populate his newly founded town in the mouth of the Vantaa River, the King issued an order to resettle the bourgeoisie of Porvoo, Ekenäs, Rauma and Ulvila into the town. Shallowness of the bay did not permit the building of a harbor, and the king allowed settlers to abandon the unfortunate place. In 1640, Count Per Brahe the Younger moved the city center with few descendants of the original settlers to the Vironniemi peninsula by the sea, currently Kruununhaka neighborhood, where the Senate Square and Helsinki Cathedral are now located.

In the course of the second half of the 17th century Helsinki, as a wooden town, suffered from regular fires, and by the beginning of the 18th century its population was below 1,700 inhabitants. For a long time, Helsinki was mainly a small administrative city of the governors of the Nyland and Tavastehus County, but its importance began to grow as a more solid naval defense began to be built in front of the city in the 18th century. Little came of the plans as Helsinki remained a tiny town plagued by poverty, wars, and diseases. The plague of 1710 killed the greater part of the inhabitants of Helsinki. In the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, the retreating Swedish administration burned Helsinki down. Despite of that, by the beginning of the 19th century the number of the city inhabitants grew to 3,000. The construction of the naval fortress Sveaborg (in Finnish ''Viapori'', today also ''Suomenlinna'') in the 18th century helped improve Helsinki's status, but it was not until Russia defeated Sweden in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that the town began to develop into a substantial city. Russians besieged the Sveaborg fortress during the war, and about one quarter of the town was destroyed in an 1808 fire.

Emperor Alexander I of Russia moved the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki on 8 April 1812 to reduce Swedish influence in Finland, and to bring the capital closer to Saint Petersburg. Following the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the Royal Academy of Turku, which at the time was the country's only university, was also relocated to Helsinki and eventually became the modern University of Helsinki. The move consolidated the city's new role and helped set it on a path of continuous growth. This transformation is highly apparent in the downtown core, which was rebuilt in the neoclassical style to resemble Saint Petersburg, mostly to a plan by the German-born architect C. L. Engel. As elsewhere, technological advancements such as railroads and industrialization were key factors behind the city's growth.

Twentieth century

The population of Helsinki was already over 100,000 in the 1910s, and despite the tumultuous nature of Finnish history during the first half of the 20th century (including the Finnish Civil War and the Winter War which both left marks on the city), Helsinki continued its steady development. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were approximately the same number of Finnish and Swedish speakers in Helsinki; the majority of the workers were Finnish-speaking. The local Helsinki slang (or ''stadin slangi'') developed among Finnish children and young people as a mixed Finnish-Swedish language from the 1890s, and it was also influenced by the Russian language, and from the 1950s onwards, slang began to become more Finnish. A landmark event was the 1952 Olympic Games, held in Helsinki. Finland's rapid urbanization in the 1970s, occurring late relative to the rest of Europe, tripled the population in the metropolitan area, and the Helsinki Metro subway system was built. The relatively sparse population density of Helsinki and its peculiar structure have often been attributed to the lateness of its growth.

Geography

Called the "Daughter of the Baltic"
or the "Pearl of the Baltic Sea", Helsinki is on the tip of a peninsula and on 315 islands. The inner city is located on a southern peninsula, ''Helsinginniemi'' ("Cape of Helsinki), which is rarely referred to by its actual name, Vironniemi ("Cape of Estonia"). Population density in certain parts of Helsinki's inner city area is comparatively higher, reaching in the district of Kallio, but as a whole Helsinki's population density of ranks the city as rather sparsely populated in comparison to other European capital cities. Outside of the inner city, much of Helsinki consists of postwar suburbs separated by patches of forest. A narrow, long Helsinki Central Park, stretching from the inner city to Helsinki's northern border, is an important recreational area for residents. The City of Helsinki has about 11,000 boat berths and possesses over 14,000 hectares (34,595 acres; 54.1 sq mi) of marine fishing waters adjacent to the Capital Region. Some 60 fish species are found in this area and recreational fishing is popular.

Major islands in Helsinki include Seurasaari, Vallisaari, Lauttasaari, and Korkeasaari – the latter being the site of Finland's largest zoo called Korkeasaari Zoo. Other noteworthy islands are the fortress island of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), the military island of Santahamina, and Isosaari. Pihlajasaari island is a favorite summer spot for gay men and naturists, comparable to Fire Island in New York City.

There are 60 nature reserves in Helsinki with a total area of . Of the total area, are water areas and are land areas. In addition, the city owns seven nature reserves in Espoo, Sipoo, Hanko and Ingå. The largest nature reserve is the Vanhankaupunginselkä, with an area of . The city's first nature reserve, Tiiraluoto of Lauttasaari, was established in 1948.

The title plant of Helsinki is the Norway maple and the title animal is the red squirrel.

Metropolitan area

The Helsinki metropolitan area, also known as the Capital Region (Finnish: ''Pääkaupunkiseutu'', Swedish: ''Huvudstadsregionen'') comprises four municipalities: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. The Helsinki urban area in Finland. It has a population of over 1.1 million, and is the most densely populated area of Finland. The Capital Region spreads over a land area of and has a population density of . With over 20 percent of the country's population in just 0.2 percent of its surface area, the area's housing density is high by Finnish standards.

The Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Greater Helsinki) consists of the cities of Helsinki Capital Region and ten surrounding municipalities: Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Tuusula, Pornainen, Mäntsälä and Vihti. The Metropolitan Area covers and has a population of over 1.4 million, or about a fourth of the total population of Finland. The metropolitan area has a high concentration of employment: approximately 750,000 jobs. Despite the intensity of land use, the region also has large recreational areas and green spaces. The Greater Helsinki area is the world's northernmost urban area with a population of over one million people, and the northernmost EU capital city.

The Helsinki urban area