HELSINKI.- Visit.alvaraalto.fi is a web service created around Aalto’s architecture. The website is now also in Russian. It offers a fascinating selection of Aalto’s designs from different decades and various parts of Finland.
Along with architectural sites, there are Aalto tours and tempting travel suggestions for encounters with culture, unique nature, and delicious local food and relaxing saunas, not forgetting beautiful Finnish design gifts. Visit.alvaraalto.fi makes it easier to plan trips, with practical information including opening hours and maps of each site, travel timetables and travel-agency contact details.
Alvar Aalto’s world-famous architecture can be enjoyed at several points around the national capital, in the centre of Helsinki and on the Otaniemi university campus in Espoo. Aalto designed extensive housing areas for forest-industry managers and workers alongside the Kymijoki River in Kotka, Kouvola and Hamina. The latest addition to the website is a real gem: the Church of the Three Crosses in Vuoksenniska in Imatra. This was completed in 1950, and combines Alvar Aalto’s sculptural architecture with a human scale.
Homely atmospheres can be enjoyed in Villa Mairea at Noormarkku in Pori and in the Terraced House at Kauttua in Eura, as well as at Paimio Sanatorium, which was a full-time home for patients. The Varkaus region on the shores of Lake Saimaa also tells the story of Aalto’s work for the Ahlström family, who owned the major Finnish forest company of the same name. In Varkaus, besides the architecture, you can also savour Carelian caviar. This is of superb quality and comes from cultivated virgin sturgeon. The best prices are found near the farms that produce it.
From Alajärvi you can take a trip to see works of Alvar Aalto’s younger day, such as Villa Väinölä, designed for his brother, and the family grave. In pauses between shopping in Seinäjoki you can pop into the splendid library, theatre or City Hall in the administrative and cultural centre. All of this is crowned by The Cross of the Plains Church, its bell tower looking down over the city centre.
Jyväskylä - known as a vibrant student city - offers activities and accommodation to suit all tastes. Jyväskylä’s numerous Aalto sites include the Alvar Aalto Museum, which provides insights into Aalto’s wide-ranging output and personal history. The Museum shop has a unique selection of high-quality Finnish design products. For travellers to Rovaniemi we warmly recommend a visit to the Administrative and Cultural Centre, which includes the Town Hall, Library and Lappia House, incorporating Rovaniemi Theatre.
“The online service launched in May has met with a positive reception, with nearly 36,000 visitors in its first six months. Travellers have found their way to Aalto’s architecture, and the service has helped us reach new publics, among them tourists from Finland and abroad,” Noora Kiili, Producer in charge of the project of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, is happy to report.
The web service has been designed and produced in partnership with tourism experts and local businesses in each location. The project has been backed by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture’s project fund for the productization of cultural tourism.
