We took a Ferry out to the sea fortress, Suomenlinna. The Finnish translation is Castle of Finland. But the fortress was started in 1748 when Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom, so then it was the Castle of Sweden. The whole fortress is built on six islands and is part of Helsinki. The two main aspects of the fortress were a series of independent fortifications on each of the linked islands and at the heart of the complex, a naval dockyard. This island fortress had sea-facing fortifications with the idea being that the enemy would not be allowed to gain a beach-head on the mainland from which to stage attacks. They also planned munition storage and residential buildings. There were many changes made over the construction years with changes in leadership and wars and all the problems that go along with a project like this.

Today, Suomenlinna is a UNESCO World Heritage site that’s popular with both tourists and locals. It was about a fifteen minute ferry ride from the Market Square harbor to the sea fortress. The islands are filled with history, six museums, a church, many restaurants and bars, and lots of artifacts, trees, lakes, and wildflowers. Some 800 people live on the island today. We spent several hours here and walked about two miles. We got a good overview but I’m sure we could have spent an entire day wandering around discovering new things.

We are approaching Suomenlinna in the first photo below. This was the primary ferry dock but we saw two more smaller ferry docks on our walk here. You can see the initial wall but this would have been on the city side and not the sea side of the fortress. You can also see the church nearby the entrance.

We saw lots of fortifications on our walk. We went into some of them which sometimes included long tunnels into the rock. There were not too many people along our way but with the size of the fortress, it has lots of room, so no big surprise. The wall in the second photo was typical of the fortifications.

The building in the third photo is a museum today. I’m not sure what was its original purpose. Some buildings were very well maintained while others were not so well maintained. You might also notice the sign for a BAR in front of the museum. We were never far from refreshments at the sea fortress.

We came across many really nice quiet areas on our walk. We saw loads of wildflowers, trees, and lakes such as the one in the fourth photo. I might not have minded being stationed here.

The sea fortress is on six islands that are central to arriving in Helsinki by sea. You can see how close is mainland Helsinki in the last photo.