Helsinki Cathedral was not always so grandly named. When Carl Ludvig Engel finished it in 1852, it went by the more workaday title of St. Nicholas Church, a tribute to the Russian tsar who then ruled Finland. Its whiteness announces itself from the sea, which is precisely the point: this was Empire-era Helsinki's calling card to arriving ships, and it remains the city's defining symbol.

Look up, not just ahead. Twelve zinc apostles line the roof's four pediments, cast by a German foundry and hoisted into place in 1849. They form one of the world's largest surviving collections of zinc sculpture. Inside, an altarpiece donated by Tsar Nicholas I depicts the burial of Christ, a gift with more political calculation behind it than piety.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Cathedral to unpack Helsinki's neoclassical Senate Square, tracing how a German architect built a Russian vision of a Finnish capital.