The town is well laid out, with long and wide streets running at right angles. The houses are large and well built, and the principal square contains several fine buildings, as the senate-house, the university, and a magnificent church. Helsingfors has a colossal Russo-Greek cathedral, assembly-rooms, botanical gardens, an observatory well supplied with both astronomical and magnetic instruments, a beautifully decorated theatre, and other handsome public buildings. The university, removed from Âbo in 1827, has 4 faculties, 53 professors, and about 900 students, and possesses a museum with extensive natural history and mineralogical collections, an ethnological collection, and a chemical laboratory. There are scientific, literary, and other learned societies, a normal lyceum, polytechnic institute, school for the blind, school of navigation, asylum for the insane, hospitals, and other educational and charitable institutions. Helsingfors is the seat of the governor-general of Finland, the imperial senate, and all the central officers of the grand-duchy. In the hall of the senate-house is a splendid throne for the emperor; in the ritter-house the various branches of the assembly meet, and there also are the remains of the library saved from the fire of Âbo, and containing 15,000 volumes. Helsingfors has several machinery manufactures (one with 850 workpeople), and produces at the rate of £100,000 per annum; it has also porcelain, faience, sugar, and tobacco factories. There are two considerable harbours, with a handsome granite quay extending along the front of the town. In 1870 the population was 32,113, in 1879 about 40,000.

Helsingfors has the largest import trade in Finland, consisting mainly of wool, colonial and manufactured wares, salt, wine, <fcc., amounting in 1874 to £1,635,744, in 1878 to £3,748,487. The exports consist chiefly of wooden wares, the total amounting to £2,340,327 in 1878. Of the imports £437,100 came from, and of the exports £87,541 went to, England. In 1874 880 vessels of 158,717 registered tons entered the port, and in 1878 713 vessels of 73,297 tons; in 1874 980 of 159,549 tons cleared, and in 1878 825 of 132,170 tons. In 1876 the port possessed 43 vessels (18 of them steamers) of 4129 tons.

Helsingfors was founded by Gustavus Vasa in the 16th century, about 4 miles N.E. of the present site, to which it was removed by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1642. In 1742 it was the scene of the capitulation of the Swedes under Löwenhaupt; but in 1749 the fortress of Sveaborg was erected by the Swedish high admiral, Count Ehrenwerd, who at his own request was afterwards buried within its walls. In 1808 Admiral Cronstedt surrendered the place to the Russians under General Suchtalen. A combined squadron of the French and English bombarded Sveaborg in 1808.

See Brummer, Historiska Uppgifter oιn Helsingfors, 1874.