See Historical Helsinki Photos On Your Phone While Walking in the City
Imagine if you could stroll around in the city and your phone would automatically show you what the place looked like in the past. Well, that’s just what I did today!
While one of Helsinki’s oldest buildings looks about the same as in 1909…
…Simonkatu street is very different compared to 1907.
The app is still experimental and so far I’ve added only a handful of Signe Brander’s photos. She’s the best-known early photographer of Helsinki.
Many Helsinki photos and other images just became available through Helsinki City Museum’s archive using Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-ND 4.0).
What happens next? I have to carefully think what one man could do in his free-time or what kind of co-operation I could do with others. I’m open to suggestions.
Learning to See in Helsinki 
That is a great app! Is there a possibility to download it? I am quiet interested in the history of Helsinki, until now I worked on the German Version of the Wikipedia article: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_von_Helsinki Have a nice day!
The app is still under development so unfortunately it is not downloadable at the moment.
The photos are all available through the linked Helsinki City Museum archive. It’s in Finnish but the big search field (Hae…) should be obvious for non-speakers as well.
Hi! We at Helsinki City Museum are thrilled to see how people use our archives opened at https://hkm.finna.fi. Great work! We’d love to tell about your project on our Facebook and Twitter accounts – maybe some useful contacts or ideas might be found that way?
Best wishes
Reeta Holma
Helsinki City Museum
Hi Reeta, feel free to tell about the project. And thanks for opening the archives!
Äntligen! :)
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Nice post and idea!