Suomenlinna, Helsinki
Apr 14th, 2008 by Juha Ylitalo
Overview
If you visit Helsinki in a summer and ask someone to recommend places to see, one of the top three places is probably going to be Suomenlinna. It is sea fortress, which construction began in 1748. It combines eight islands, has around 850 residents, is listed as UNESCO World Heritage site and is very popular destination for locals as well as tourists. It is great place for picnic, but if your interested about history, it also has lot of museums in it.
History
As a sea fortress, it was never very good at its job. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia, Russians conquered Helsinki from land (in year 1808) and especially since it was winter, it was easy for them to get upper hand on situation. After few months siege, Suomenlinna surrendered to the Russians. During Russian era Suomenlinna faced enemy during Crimean war (1854-56), when Anglo-French fleet stopped by and bombarded Suomenlinna. At that point, Suomenlinna’s artillery was out of date and as such it had less range and less accuracy than what fleet had on its ships. After fleet was happy on the descruction that they managed to do with their fleet, they simply sailed away.
Present
During February 2008, I posted you guys some photographs from my visit to Suomenlinna. Last weekend I started to assemble photo album about my photograph about Suomenlinna and to my shock, my collection is quite limited. Even so, I manage to collect 43 photographs, which I like and published those as Suomenlinna photo album. In coming summer, I will have to do some more picnic trips there, so that I will get more photographs into that album so that you will see how nice place it can really be.
Our older stories about Suomenlinna:
Naval Academy of Finnish Navy
Architrecture in Susisaari
Kustaanmiekka in winter
Fire in a hole
Solitary
Cannon Fire
Technical details: Canon EOS 20D & Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM (1/1600s, f/5.6, ISO200)
More information: Suomenlinna in Wikipedia
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