ABSTRACT
Helsinki (Helsingsfors), like St Petersburg a century earlier, was planned as a capital city, albeit not from scratch.1 Finland had been part of the Kingdom of Sweden since the Middle Ages, but after the war between Sweden and Russia in 1808-9, Finland became an autonomous grand duchy under the Russian tsar. Åbo (Turku) had long been a kind of de facto capital city in the Finnish region of the Swedish kingdom, but shortly after the end of the war the idea was launched of moving the government to Helsinki, a town of hitherto minor importance. In Helsinki’s favour, however, was its location closer to St Petersburg and further away from the old mother country; moreover, a fire in 1808 had destroyed much of the town, which meant that the opportunities for creating an imposing townscape were better here than in Åbo. Even before the transfer of the government had begun to be seriously considered, a building committee for the reconstruction of Helsinki had been appointed, consisting of representatives of the burghers and chaired by the county governor. In 1810 the committee produced a plan proposal drawn by Lieutenant Anders Kocke.2 This implied some extension of the existing urban area but no radical changes in the old plan (figure 5.1), the main lines of which had been created during the seventeenth century by Anders Torstensson (see pp. 201 f).3
