Metravel city quest

A Vyborg quest: Finnish Viipuri — from Northern Art Nouveau to Aalto

City Vyborg: free walking route “A Vyborg quest: Finnish Viipuri — from Northern Art Nouveau to Aalto” along the sights. 10 points. Approximately 2 h. Quests

Most visitors to Vyborg head straight for the castle and the Old Town, but this route leads the other way — to where, behind the levelled ramparts, a completely different city grew up.

In the 1860s the old fortifications of Stone Town and the Horned Fortress were pulled down, boulevards and an esplanade park were laid out in their place, and new wide streets were driven through. Then, within some three decades, from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the 1930s, Finnish Viipuri rose here: banks and offices, apartment buildings with little turrets, an art museum on a bastion, the library of the young Alvar Aalto. On the facades of Northern Art Nouveau live stone beasts and birds, and in the park stand bronze figures by Finnish sculptors, each with its own story.

This is also a city of several languages. The Swedes, the Finns and the Russians each called the same street by a different name, and inscriptions on facades are still found in two languages — along the way you will learn to read them as clues.

The route is on foot, about two kilometres, with no backtracking: ten stops, one of them an optional rest. Almost all the tasks are done outdoors, all year round. We start at the red-brick bank on the corner of Market Square, where Lenin Avenue begins.

What is on the route

The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.

  1. The Bank of Finland — the Gateway to Torkelskaya Street — Lenin Avenue, 2 — the bank facade with the main entrance, on the avenue side

    The red-brick building on the corner of Market Square is the former Vyborg branch of the Bank of Finland, completed in spring 1910 to a design by Professor Gustaf Nyström.

  2. Mikael Agricola — the Man Who Taught Finnish to Write — Theatre Square, the bronze bust by the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul

    Beside the Lutheran Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, on a granite pedestal, stands a bronze bust of a man in a beret and a fur collar — Mikael Agricola, whom Finland calls the father of the written Finnish language.

  3. Uno Ullberg's Vyborg Acropolis — Ladanov Street, 1 — the stairs up to the tall portal of the exhibition centre on the Panzerlax bastion

    On the old Panzerlax bastion stands a white building with a tall portal without a single column — the former Vyborg Art Museum and art school, built to a design by Uno Ullberg and opened on 12 October 1930. Contemporaries nicknamed it the “Vyborg Acropolis”: the house is raised on the fortress bastion like an ancient temple on a rock.

    Opening hours: daily 10:00–18:00, ticket office until 17:20 · Ticket: 400 ₽ (citizens of Russia and the EAEU), 150 ₽ for pensioners, free for children under 14

  4. The “Pelican” House — the Bird above the Archway — Leningradsky Avenue, 2 — the archway into the courtyard with the number 2 on the keystone

    Come down from the bastion to the corner of Leningradsky Avenue: here stands a four-storey apartment house of the “Pelican” joint-stock company, built in 1906–1907 in the Northern Art Nouveau style.

  5. The Espilä Restaurant — a Rest Stop in the Esplanade (optional) — Lenin Avenue, 3A — the restaurant pavilion at the edge of the park

    Across the road from the houses of the avenue begins the city park — the former Esplanade, laid out in the 1860s on the site of the ramparts and moats; the Finns called it Espilä. From the 19th century a restaurant pavilion stood in the park, known across the whole country in Finnish times.

    Opening hours: daily 12:00–24:00 · Ticket: free entry, pay according to the restaurant menu

  6. Yrjö Liipola's “Forest Youth” — Lenin Park, the alley behind the Espilä restaurant, closer to Leningradsky Avenue

    A few steps from the pavilion, a bronze nude youth strides on a granite pedestal — “Forest Youth” by the sculptor Yrjö Liipola, placed in the park in 1932. One of his arms is flung up, as if he were calling out to someone, while the other is lowered and holds a leash: the youth is not walking alone.

  7. The Elk — the Bronze Giant of the Esplanade — Lenin Park, by the Alvar Aalto Library — a bronze elk on a granite pedestal

    Further along the alley, right by the library, you are greeted by the park's main bronze resident — an elk by the Finnish animal sculptor Jussi Mäntynen. It stands on a low granite pedestal with its head held high and its heavy palmate antlers spread, as if it had just stepped out to the forest edge and were listening.

  8. The Alvar Aalto Library — Suvorov Avenue, 4 — the main entrance to the library from the park side

    The white building with ribbon windows behind the elk is the Alvar Aalto Municipal Library, his only building in Vyborg and a famous monument of functionalism.

  9. Red Well Square — Red Square, the middle of the square between the house with the turret on the corner of Leningradskoye Highway and the Kulma building

    Lenin Avenue leads out onto the city's main square, and its name has nothing to do with Moscow: the Swedes called it Röda Brunns Torget, the Finns Punaisenlähteentori — that is, Red Well Square, after an old well that once stood here.

  10. Station Square — the Letter W and Saarinen's Bears — Station Square, in front of the railway station building — a memorial sign in the shape of the letter W

    Walk up Vokzalnaya Street to the station: the route ends where most visitors to Vyborg begin theirs. In front of the station stands a memorial sign to the city — a huge steel letter W under a black fortress crown, the work of the Vyborg sculptor Viktor Dimov, installed in 2006.

Where to go next

This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.

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