Peter the Great founded this monastery in 1710 on the spot where Alexander Nevsky beat the Swedes on the Neva in 1240. It was the wrong spot, and the city's own encyclopaedia says so.
The Summer Garden's marble statues came indoors in 2009 and what stands there now is polymer concrete. Behind that small correction lies the most contested restoration carried out in this city in thirty years.
The river town fifty kilometres east of Helsinki: the arson that destroyed the cathedral roof in 2006, the Diet of Porvoo, Runeberg, and why there is no train.
Mannerheim, Alvar Aalto and Artists' Hill; Finland's largest war cemetery and the wars it actually fought; why Sibelius is not here; and how the cemetery is really laid out.
The Suomalainen brothers' church cut into granite in 1969: why the air-raid-shelter story is wrong, what the interior does, and the admission charge it introduced in 2017.
Finnish Orthodox rather than Russian, built from the brick of a Baltic fortress an Anglo-French fleet destroyed in the Crimean War, and now charging admission.
Engel's cathedral above Senate Square: who actually built it, the two name changes, the grey repaint of 2025, and the fact that it now charges admission.
The UNESCO sea fortress at the harbour mouth: the three names, the 1808 surrender, the Anglo-French bombardment of 1855, the ferries, and which museums shut for winter.
The most visited and least loved part of the city — but the sea lions, the historic ships at Hyde Street Pier and the Musée Mécanique are worth a morning, and the Alcatraz ferries leave from Pier 33, not from here.
Tickets sell out weeks ahead, the ferry leaves from Pier 33 rather than Pier 41, the operator changed in 2006, and the Birdman of Alcatraz kept no birds on Alcatraz.