Central Railway Station metro station (Helsinki)

Asematunneli (Swedish: Stationstunneln) is an underground shopping center connecting the Helsinki Central railway station and City-Center in downtown Helsinki, Finland. The area also has a ticket sales area for the Rautatientori metro station and connections to the nearby Forum shopping mall as well as Stockmann and Sokos department stores. The shops and supermarkets in Asematunneli are licensed to stay open longer than normal as well as during the national holidays, making the shopping center an important location for last minute and emergency shopping for the people of the greater Helsinki area. Kamppi Center and the bottom floor of Sähkötalo across Fredrikinkatu can also be accessed via tunnels by going through the Forum shopping mall first. The interconnecting areas provide for convenient movement across a wide area of central Helsinki, and allow pedestrians to escape the rain, snow, and cold weather that dominate much of the Finnish calendar. Asematunneli was built by digging up Kaivokatu and pouring concrete canopies for the tunnels in 1966–1967.

Kaivokatu (Swedish: Brunnsgatan) is a short street in central Helsinki, Finland. It runs past the Central Station and station square, connecting Mannerheimintie in the west with Mikonkatu in the east (after which the road continues as Kaisaniemenkatu). Towards its eastern end is located the Ateneum art museum of the Finnish National Gallery. Kaivokatu carries heavy road traffic, forming the link between the main thoroughfares in and out of the city, eastbound via Hämeentie and westbound via Mannerheimintie, as well as several tram and bus routes. To reduce its traffic load, the City Council decided in 2023 to comprehensively rebuild the Kaivokatu area in 2026–2027, as part of which the street will be closed to private cars and remain open to only public transport, bicycles and pedestrians, a controversial plan which received plenty of attention and vocal resistance as well as support. The street gets its name, which literally means "well street" from the 19th-century Kluuvi well (Globrunnen), located on what is now the corner of Kaivokatu and Keskuskatu. The name in Finnish was first attested in 1866, and made official in 1909. Underneath the western end of Kaivokatu is the underground shopping centre Asematunneli, and below that, the Central Railway Station metro station of the Helsinki Metro.

The Student Union of the University of Helsinki (Finnish: Helsingin yliopiston ylioppilaskunta, HYY, Swedish: Studentkåren vid Helsingfors universitet, HUS) was founded in 1868. It currently has 32,000 members and is one of the world's richest student organizations, with assets of several hundred million euros. Among other things, it owns a good deal of property in the city centre of Helsinki. The union has been at the centre of student politics from the 19th-century nationalist movements, through the actions of the New Left in the 1960s, up to the present. Its governing assembly consists of parties which are connected to faculty organisations, the Student Nations, and the mainstream political parties. In May 2019, HYY's finance board (talousjohtokunta) removed Hapsu ry, the university branch of the Finns Party’s youth organization Finns Party Youth, from its register because Hapsu ry had expressed the opinion that "European nations are white, so it is only natural and healthy that whiteness is dominant in European scientific communities".

The New Student House (Finnish: Uusi ylioppilastalo, colloquially Uusi, "the new one"; Swedish: Nya studenthuset), originally named Osakuntatalo ("the House of the Nations"), is the current student house of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki, located in central Helsinki, Finland, at Mannerheimintie 5, right next to the Old Student House. It is part of the Kaivopiha building complex owned by the student union. The new student house houses the central office of the student union, the Ylioppilaslehti office, and premises for many nations and student organisations; part of the building has also been leased for third-party business and office use. The new student house was completed in 1910, and was designed by architects Armas Lindgren and Wivi Lönn. From 1924-1968 it contained the Hotel Hansa. The building used to be called Osakuntatalo and was mainly used by the student nations at the university. Five of the fifteen nations at the University of Helsinki still work in the building: the Finnish-speaking Eteläsuomalainen osakunta, Savolainen osakunta and Varsinaissuomalainen osakunta along with the Swedish-speaking Åbo Nation and Östra Finlands Nation. The A side of the new student house, and part of the B side, remains only in the use of student activities. The third student house of the student union was inaugurated in November 2008 in Leppäsuo near Domus Academica. The structure is currently being remodeled, along with the historic Hotel Seurahuone. Both are owned by the HYY Group, the business arm of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki. The structures are being combined into a single luxury hotel, to be called the Grand Hansa Hotel. It will open in 2022, managed by The Unbound Collection division of Hyatt.

Vltava is the largest Czech restaurant in Finland, located in central Helsinki. It was opened in spring 2005 to a Jugend architecture building protected by the Finnish National Board of Antiquities, located on the Elielinaukio square, between the Helsinki Central railway station and the main building of the Finnish post office. The name of the restaurant comes from the Vltava river (Moldau in German), running through Prague and the Czech Republic. The restaurant is owned by HOK-Elanto.

The City-Center was a plan to raze and rebuild the block between the central Helsinki streets of Kaivokatu, Keskuskatu and Aleksanterinkatu, creating a unified, modern appearance for the area. The plan was originally drafted between 1958 and 1960 by Viljo Revell; Heikki Castrén continued work on the plan after Revell's death in 1964. The fulfillment of the plan would have required the demolition of several old buildings that are today considered to be a vital part of Helsinki's heritage. The only part of the plan that was implemented as planned is the 1967 office and shopping centre building right across the street from the Helsinki Central railway station, popularly known as Makkaratalo, Finnish for "sausage house": the elevated parking lot occupying the third floor is encircled by a decorative railing which is said to resemble a sausage. The first occurrence of the name was in a caricature drawn by the Finnish cartoonist Kari Suomalainen in Helsingin Sanomat. In the cartoon, a man is buying food from a snack bar near the Makkaratalo. He points at the railing, and the snack bar vendor replies, "Well, I'm just a small-time businessman."Today, the term "City-Center" refers to the entire shopping complex consisting of the Makkaratalo, various older properties, and the pathways connecting them to the adjacent streets. However, the term is rarely used and is unfamiliar even to most natives of Helsinki.The Finnish real estate company Sponda bought the City-Center in 2000 and has extensively renovated it. The building is currently protected by Finland's National Board of Antiquities as part of the city's heritage. In 2005 a decision was made to place the building under protection, allowing removal of the car-ramps but not the "sausage".The Helsingin kaupunginmuseo (Helsinki city Museum Bureau) also concluded in a written statement that The Makkaratalo reflects the Finnish ideology of planning in the 60's, e.g., the view that the city of Helsinki should prepare for a wider use of cars as part of becoming a modern metropolis. It is also a prime example of Viljo Revell's work. In the view of the Helsinkian, the Makkaratalo presents the perspective of everyday life. It has become a vital part of the Helsinki cityscape and a part of the collective memory of Helsinkians. However, this view can not be considered to be widespread in Helsinki. The Makkaratalo is commonly considered an eyesore. There have been several public statements about its ugliness, considering its very central place. For instance, the former leader of the National Board of Antiquities has stated that he considers the building an ugly error in judgement in city-planning, and would not oppose its demolition. The Makkaratalo also topped a 2004 poll by Helsingin Sanomat as the ugliest building in Helsinki. It was also featured in a 2005 series in Helsingin Sanomat about the oddest construction plans in the rapid growth of the 1960s.

The Old Student House (Finnish: Vanha ylioppilastalo, colloquially called Vanha, "the old one"; Swedish: Gamla studenthuset) is the former student house of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki, located in central Helsinki, Finland, near the crossing of Aleksanterinkatu and Mannerheimintie.

The Eliel Square (Finnish: Elielinaukio, Swedish: Elielplatsen) is a square on the west side of the Helsinki Central Station in the heart of Helsinki, Finland. It is named after the railway station designer Eliel Saarinen. The square is for the most part the departure and arrival platforms for regional buses. At the northern end of the square is the Holiday Inn Hotel and at the southern end is the restaurant Vltava. On the west side are the Main Post Office and Sanomatalo. On the other side of the river there is also another square, the Railway Square, which together with the Eliel Square forms a so-called open pair.

Helsinki Central Station (Finnish: Helsingin päärautatieasema, Swedish: Helsingfors centralstation) (HEC) is the main station for commuter rail and long-distance trains departing from Helsinki, Finland. The station is used by approximately 400,000 people per day, of which about 200,000 are passengers. It serves as the terminus for all trains in the Helsinki commuter rail network, as well as for all Helsinki-bound long-distance trains in Finland. The Rautatientori (Central Railway Station) metro station is located in the same building. The station building was designed by Eliel Saarinen and inaugurated in 1919. Helsinki Central was chosen as one of the world's most beautiful railway stations by BBC in 2013.

On 4 January 2010 at the Helsinki Central Station, four empty passenger carriages overran the buffers of platform 13. The carriages had broken free of their train during a shunting manoeuvre and ran under gravity down the gentle hill from Linnunlaulu before being diverting into an empty platform and impacting the buffers at 20–30 kilometres per hour.The eight-carriage train arriving from the depot had been due to form the 08:12 departure running from Helsinki to Kajaani, through central Finland via Lahti and Kuopio. The formation which broke away consisted of three double-decker "Intercity 2" carriages, followed by a single-decker restaurant car. The runaway carriages were quickly detected and deliberately routed into one of the shorter commuter platforms (fitted with large concrete barriers beyond the buffers) in order to minimise damage to the main station area. Passengers aboard an adjacent commuter train waiting to depart were ordered to leave their train and run away from the area and announcements were made over the station's loudspeaker system. The first carriage of the four runaway cars mounted the concrete barrier. Members of the public in an Ernst & Young office beyond the end of the platform and those in the Holiday Inn hotel above the platforms all escaped without injury. The first carriage then struck the hotel's conference room, causing extensive damage to the room. The conductor aboard the train as it came in sustained light injuries to their arm, with nobody else injured.Services had resumed—at a reduced level by the afternoon—following repairs to damage to the overhead line. The Finnish Accident Investigation Board announced that they would proceed with an investigation into why the brakes had not automatically applied. A restaurant car and one of the passenger carriages were towed to the depot by a diesel locomotive during the course of the night, after which the front carriage was partially dragged back out of the hotel building. The building that had taken the force of the crash was deemed to be structurally sound.On 18 January 2010 the Finnish Accident Investigation Board made available their interim report which concluded that the incident had been caused by a combination of bad weather and then human error. Initially, snow and ice had caused the front carriages to detach from the rest of the train; followed by the guard having released the brakes manually—not realizing that the two halves of the train were no longer coupled.

Mannerheimintie (Swedish: Mannerheimvägen), named after the Finnish military leader and statesman Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, is the main street and boulevard of Helsinki, Finland. It was originally named Heikinkatu (Swedish: Henriksgatan), after Robert Henrik Rehbinder, but was renamed after the Winter War. The change of name was also suitable due to Mannerheim having paraded in along that road during the Finnish Civil War (1918), after German forces allied with Mannerheim's Finnish forces had retaken the city. That event is also portrayed in the landmark statue of Mannerheim sitting horseback. The statue is located along the Mannerheimintie just outside the modern arts museum Kiasma. The street starts at Erottaja in the city centre, near the Swedish Theatre and continues in a northernly direction past the Stockmann department store. It then continues as a main thoroughfare past the districts of Kamppi, Töölö, Meilahti, Laakso and Ruskeasuo, until it finally merges into a busy Tampere Highway (E12) leading outside the city towards Hämeenlinna and Tampere. (Geographically, the highway only ends in central Tampere, having become a small street called Kalevan puistotie, meeting the major street Kekkosentie.) Many famous buildings are located at or near Mannerheimintie. Besides the theatre and department store mentioned above, these include the House of Parliament, the main post office, the Kiasma modern art museum, the Finlandia Hall, the National Museum, the Helsinki Opera House, Hotel Marski, and Tilkka. There are many famous sculptures along the Mannerheimintie. There include the Three Smiths Statue and the Statue of Mannerheim near Kiasma. There are only two streets running across Mannerheimintie: Nordenskiöldinkatu overground, and Tilkanvierto below it as an underpass. There are very many other streets connecting with Mannerheimintie, but all of them either end at Mannerheimintie or continue across it under a different name.

The Three Smiths Statue is a sculpture by Felix Nylund, situated in Helsinki, Finland, in Three Smiths Square at the intersection of Aleksanterinkatu and Mannerheimintie. This realistic statue, unveiled in 1932, depicts three naked smiths hammering on an anvil. Felix Nylund submitted a design for a smith statue for a memorial for Johan Vilhelm Snellman in 1913. In 1919 he designed a monumental statue with three smiths located on top of a stone pillar ten metres high. Neither of these designs was actually made into a statue, but Nylund took advantage of his previous designs when sculpting the Three Smiths Statue. Of the three smiths depicted in the statue, one is a master smith holding the iron on an anvil. The other two smiths are hammering on the iron. Nylund used wrestlers from the gymnastics and sports club Jyry as models for the smiths' bodies. The master smith has the face of poet Arvid Mörne, the smith holding his hammer up has Nylund's own face, and the smith holding his hammer down has the face of sculptor Aku Nuutinen. It is said that mason Paavo Koskinen and police officer Sundström posed as models for the bodies. The top part of the bronze statue's granite base is encircled by the Latin text MONUMENTUM – CURAVIT – LEGATUM – J. TALLBERGIANUM – PRO HELSINGFORS A.D. MCMXXXII ("The statue was erected with the help of a donation from J. Tallberg by Pro Helsingfors in the year 1932"). The statue was donated to the city of Helsinki by the Pro Helsingfors foundation, which had acquired it with the help of a monetary donation by the businessman Julius Tallberg. Tallberg's commerce house is situated at the northern end of the Three Smiths Square. The statue was damaged in a bombing during the Continuation War in 1944. Marks of the damage can still be seen in the base of the statue, and the anvil has a hole caused by a bomb shrapnel. The Three Smiths Square is a popular meeting place. There is a heating system underneath Aleksanterinkatu keeping the street free from snow and ice even in temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius. The heat comes from warm water flowing from the nearby buildings. Thus people can sit at the statue even in wintertime. Upon close investigation of the statue, it can be seen that the positions of the smiths are more artistic than realistic: the smiths are standing so close to each other that if they were to actually hammer, they would hit each other on the head instead of the anvil. The original gypsum models of the statue have been located in the library of the Finnish Workers' Academy in Kauniainen.Nowadays the statue is annually capped with Santa Claus hats at the end of November at the Wappujoulu event of the University of Helsinki student organisation Limes.In spring 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic surgical masks were placed on the smiths and an effigy of the Coronavirus was placed on the anvil so it looked like the smiths were hammering down on the virus.