Suvilahti

This guide to Suvilahti in Helsinki traces a Sornainen power plant and gasworks from its 1909 opening, when the city decided to generate its own electricity, through decades as a state monopoly's cash machine, to its shutdown in the 1970s and 90s. You'll hear how the site sat empty as a costly liability until 2008, when the city handed it to a company built on one rule: earn your own keep. Look for the two brick gasholders still standing over the yard, relics of the plant's industrial decades.