Kluuvi is the commercial centre of Helsinki

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, and a neighbourhood in the Vironniemi

Vironniemi

Vironniemi is a district of Helsinki, Finland, forming the core part of the city centre, thus also the central location of the Finnish governmental and financial decision making, and the location of Helsinki's most important churches...

 district of Helsinki. The Helsinki Central railway station

Helsinki Central railway station

Helsinki Central railway station is a widely recognised landmark in central Helsinki, Finland, and the focal point of public transport in the Greater Helsinki area. The station is used by approximately 200,000 passengers per day, making it Finland's most-visited building...

, the Helsinki main post office, the Stockmann

Stockmann, Helsinki centre

The Stockmann department store is a culturally significant business building and department store located in the centre of Helsinki, Finland. It is one of many department stores owned by the Stockmann corporation. Annually, about 17 million customers visit the store and it is thus the largest...

 and Sokos

Sokos

Sokos is a chain of department stores in Finland that is part of the S-Group. It should not be confused with the hotel chain, Sokos Hotels.- Department stores :* Espoo * Helsinki* Helsinki * Hämeenlinna* Joensuu* Jyväskylä...

 department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

s, the Kluuvi shopping centre

Kluuvi shopping centre

The Kluuvi shopping centre is a shopping centre on Aleksanterinkatu in the Kluuvi district in central Helsinki, Finland. The shopping centre has about 35 businesses...

 and the main offices of Finnish banks are located in Kluuvi. Kluuvi includes the central campus of the University of Helsinki

University of Helsinki

The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as The Royal Academy of Turku, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available...

, the Ateneum

Ateneum

The Ateneum is a major museum in Finland. It is located in the centre of Helsinki at the Rautatientori square opposite Helsinki Central Railway Station. It has the biggest collections of classical art in Finland. Previously the Ateneum building also housed the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and...

 art museum, and the movie theatres Maxim, Kinopalatsi and Bristol.

The neighbourhood is home to 23,000 jobs and several hundred inhabitants.

The official name of the neighbourhood is very seldom used in everyday speech, Helsinkians usually refer to the area as "the centre" (keskusta) or "the core centre" (ydinkeskusta).

History

The Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

 word kluuvi and the Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 word glo mean a gloe lake

Gloe lake

Flads and gloe lakes are different stages in the process when a bay in the sea turns into a freshwater lake due to post-glacial rebound. Flads and gloe lakes exist in the Baltic Sea in Finland and Sweden.The process can be divided into four stages:...

 - a bay that is closed up or closing up. The district was originally a bay in the Gulf of Finland

Gulf of Finland

The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn...

, which eventually became swampy. The Kluuvi bay was filled in the middle of the 19th century. The odour of rotting seaweed

Seaweed

Seaweed is a loose, colloquial term encompassing macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae. The term includes some members of the red, brown and green algae...

 and other plants can still be smelled near construction sites.

The Helsinki Metro

Helsinki Metro

The Helsinki Metro , is the metro system in Helsinki, Finland. It is the World's most northern metro system, and currently the only one in Finland. The system was opened to the general public on 2 August 1982 after 27 years of planning...

 construction found a kluuvi in practice in the district, when it turned out the planned site for a metro tunnel was supposed to go didn't have a solid rock base. The soft ground had to be artificially frozen before it was possible to dig through it to construct a solid base for the metro track.

External links