Helsinki Winter Garden

This guide to the Helsinki Winter Garden follows a single condition Jakob Julius af Lindfors wrote into his 1893 deed of gift, guaranteeing free entry to the steel-and-glass palm house he had just funded. It traces what Helsinki's winters were like before the glasshouse opened, architect Gustaf Nystrom's design modeled on London's Crystal Palace, and the fresco painted overhead the same year by Salomo Wuorio. Look for the collection's oldest resident nearby, moved in from a villa early in the twentieth century.