Helsinki founded by Gustav I of Sweden
Founding of Helsinki
Helsinki was established as a trading town by King Gustav I of Sweden in 12 June 1550, as the town of Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval on the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland (today known as Tallinn). In order to populate his newly founded town in the mouth of the Vantaa River, the King issued an order to resettle the bourgeoisie of Porvoo, Ekenäs, Rauma and Ulvila into the town. Shallowness of the bay did not permit the building of a harbor, and the king allowed settlers to abandon the unfortunate place. In 1640, Count Per Brahe the Younger moved the city center with few descendants of the original settlers to the Vironniemi peninsula by the sea, currently Kruununhaka neighborhood, where the Senate Square and Helsinki Cathedral are now located.In the course of the second half of the 17th century Helsinki, as a wooden town, suffered from regular fires, and by the beginning of the 18th century its population was below 1,700 inhabitants. For a long time, Helsinki was mainly a small administrative city of the governors of the Nyland and Tavastehus County, but its importance began to grow as a more solid naval defense began to be built in front of the city in the 18th century. Little came of the plans as Helsinki remained a tiny town plagued by poverty, wars, and diseases. The plague of 1710 killed the greater part of the inhabitants of Helsinki. After the Russians conquered Helsinki in May 1713 during the Great Northern War, the retreating Swedish administration set fire to parts of the city. Despite of that, by the beginning of the 19th century the number of the city inhabitants grew to 3,000. The construction of the naval fortress Sveaborg (in Finnish Viapori, today also Suomenlinna) in the 18th century helped improve Helsinki's status, but it was not until Russia defeated Sweden in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that the town began to develop into a substantial city. Russians besieged the Sveaborg fortress during the war, and about one quarter of the town was destroyed in an 1808 fire.Emperor Alexander I of Russia moved the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki on 8 April 1812 to reduce Swedish influence in Finland, and to bring the capital closer to Saint Petersburg. Following the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the Royal Academy of Turku, which at the time was the country's only university, was also relocated to Helsinki and eventually became the modern University of Helsinki. The move consolidated the city's new role and helped set it on a path of continuous growth. This transformation is highly apparent in the downtown core, which was rebuilt in the neoclassical style to resemble Saint Petersburg, mostly to a plan by the German-born architect C. L. Engel. As elsewhere, technological advancements such as railroads and industrialization were key factors behind the city's growth.
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