Helsinki was founded in 1550 by Swedish king Gustav Vasa and is the sixth-oldest town in Finland. The king longed to create a rival to the Hansa trading town of Tallinn, the present-day capital of Estonia. By royal decree traders from Ekenäs and a few other towns were bundled off to the newly founded settlement, known as Helsingfors.

For more than 200 years Helsinki remained a backwater market town on a windy, rocky peninsula. Then, in 1809, Russia annexed Finland from the decaying Swedish empire. A capital closer to St Petersburg was needed to keep a better watch on Finland's domestic politics. Helsinki was chosen - in large part because of the massive sea fortress (now called Suomenlinna) just outside the harbour - and so in 1812 the classy Turku lost its long-standing status as Finland's premier town.

A devastating fire in 1808 provided an impetus to rebuild Helsinki in a manner befitting a capital. German-born architect Carl Ludwig Engel and local architect Johan Albrecht Ehrenström spearheaded the project.

In the 19th- and early 20th centuries, Helsinki grew rapidly in all directions. Railway construction helped the city become an affluent industrial centre, and grand art nouveau buildings reflected that wealth. The arts also flourished at the turn of the 20th century, with noted composer Jean Sibelius leading a renaissance of Finnish culture.