Helsinki Highlights and Seurasaari Open-Air Museum

Private tour
Duration: 5 h
Moderate walking
Multiple languages

Overview

This five-hour tour puts the two Helsinkis side by side. First the capital itself, neoclassical around Senate Square and boldly modern everywhere else, then Seurasaari, an island of pine and rock where a whole country’s worth of old wooden buildings has been collected and rebuilt since 1909.

The tour covers:

The Seurasaari Open-Air Museum, admission included
The Rock Church, admission included
The Sibelius Monument, Finlandia Hall and the Olympic Stadium
Senate Square, the Lutheran cathedral and Uspenski Cathedral
Free time at the harbourside Market Square

Please note that the tour order and the time spent at each venue may vary.

What you will see

Farmhouses, cottages and a wooden church of 1686 on a wooded island
The Rock Church, blasted into granite and roofed with copper
The Sibelius Monument, six hundred steel pipes in a seaside park
Senate Square, the white cathedral and the Orthodox Uspenski
Free time at the Market Square for salmon soup and berries

Itinerary

Meeting by the ship

Meeting by the ship, outside the port area. The start time of the tour is given approximately and will be adjusted depending on your ship arrival time. The exact meeting time will be specified on your confirmation letter.
Panoramic drive

A panoramic drive along Esplanadi, the tree-lined promenade laid out in 1812, and up Mannerheim Street, the city's main boulevard. On the way you pass the Presidential Palace, the National Museum, the Opera House, Alvar Aalto's white marble Finlandia Hall of 1971, the Parliament House behind its fourteen granite columns and the Olympic Stadium of 1938, which held the Games of 1952. Steven Holl's Kiasma museum of contemporary art stands on the same street, finished in 1998.
Sibelius Monument

A photo stop at the Sibelius Monument in its seaside park, Eila Hiltunen's welded sculpture of 1967. More than six hundred hollow steel pipes, weighing twenty-four tonnes together, stand for the music of Jean Sibelius, the composer whose Finlandia became the sound of Finland's late-19th-century national movement.
Rock Church

A visit to Temppeliaukio, the church quarried straight down into the granite of the square in 1969 to a design by the brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen. The walls are the bare blasted rock, the dome is a coil of copper strip twenty-two kilometres long, and daylight falls in through one hundred and eighty skylights around its rim. The acoustics are so good that it is used as a concert hall as often as a church.
Senate Square

Senate Square, the neoclassical centre Carl Ludvig Engel built for the newly established Grand Duchy of Finland in the 1830s and 1840s, with the white Lutheran cathedral on its steps and the statue of Alexander II in the middle. Nearby stands Uspenski Cathedral, the red-brick Orthodox church of 1868 that is the largest in western Europe, and the Central Station of 1919, Eliel Saarinen's granite landmark with its clock tower and its four stone lantern carriers.
Free time at the Market Square

Free time at the Market Square on the harbour front, where the stalls sell smoked salmon, salmon soup, wild blueberries and cloudberries by season, and craftspeople sell birch and reindeer leather. The bronze mermaid on the corner is Havis Amanda, made by Ville Vallgren in 1908 and known to everyone in the city as Manta.
Seurasaari Open-Air Museum

A short drive and a footbridge take you to Seurasaari, a wooded island in a bay of the city. The open-air museum founded here in 1909 holds eighty-seven buildings brought in from every part of Finland and rebuilt on the island: farmsteads, cottages, storehouses, a manor, and the wooden church of Karuna of 1686. Walking among them, with a guide to explain how people heated, ate and slept in them, is the clearest picture of rural Finnish life you can get in a morning.
Return to the ship

A scenic drive back to the cruise port

Price includes

Professional guide for 5 hours
Transportation in an A/C vehicle for 5 hours
Pick up and drop off in the harbor
Admission to the Rock Church, the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum

Not included

Lunch
Tips (recommended tips for guide: 10% of the tour cost, for driver: 5% of the tour cost)

Meeting point

The meeting point is located outside the port area. Please, make sure to read disembarkation instructions sent through email with other documentation.

Prices

People	Price per person
1	€964
2	€490
3	€365
4	€278
5	€226
6	€201
7	€187
8	€166

People	Price per person
9	€149
10	€134
11	€123
12	€114
13	€106
14–15	€100
16	€95

Good to know

Visas and tour tickets

US and EU citizens need no visa or tour ticket to come ashore in Helsinki.

Payment

A deposit of 50% is due when you book.
The balance is due on the day of the tour, in cash (euros) or by credit card.
Full payment is due when you book a single excursion.
You receive a confirmation as soon as your online payment goes through.

Cancellation

Tell us in writing if you or anyone in your party cancels a confirmed booking.
Deposits are refunded in full up to 72 hours before the tour.
Deposits are not refunded within 72 hours of the tour.
No refund is given for a no-show, or once the tour has been paid in full.

Availability and notes

Ask us about availability at least 48 hours before your ship reaches the port.
The schedule is adjusted to the arrival time of your ship.
Entry to the Rock Church cannot be guaranteed, as services and private events sometimes close it.