Kaivopuisto

This guide to Kaivopuisto in Helsinki follows a park built on a promise: in 1834, businessman Henrik Borgstrom and his partners set out to give the city a spa where wealthy Russians, barred by the tsar from touring Europe's cure towns, could soak and take the waters under a doctor's orders. A bathhouse called Kaivohuone opened in 1838, designed by Carl Ludvig Engel, on this rocky point above the Gulf of Finland. The trouble, as you'll hear, is that nobody had ever actually found a spring here, and the mineral water in every guest's glass came from somewhere else entirely. Stand on the shore today, where tens of thousands still gather every first of May for Finland's biggest picnic.