Hietaranta Beach

This guide to Hietaranta Beach in Helsinki starts with a black granite sundial on the hill above the sand, engraved tempus fugit, time flies, in a city where the June sun barely sets. It traces the sundial back to 1931, when sculptor Gerda Qvist, one of the first Finnish women to build a career carving stone, won a public sculpture competition on a beach that had recently been a landfill. Look up from the sand between volleyball games to find her all-but-forgotten dial still keeping its stubborn claim about time.