Finland Guide
Helsinki and the south
Museum of Workers' Housing
Address: Kirstinkuja 4
Opening time: June– Aug Mon– Thurs & Sun 11am–4pm
Price: €3
Website: www.hel.fi/kaumuseo
The nearby Museum of Workers' Housing holds some fascinating social history. The series of just-renovated wooden buildings that now hold the museum were constructed during the early 1900s to provide housing for the impoverished country folk who moved to the growing, increasingly industrialized city to work as street cleaners and refuse collectors. Six of the one-room homes where the new arrivals settled have been re-created with period furnishings, and a biography on the door describes each flat's occupants – woeful tales of overcrowding, overwork and sons who left for America and never returned.