Finland · Uusimaa · Helsinki
Munkkisaari, Helsinki — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Munkkisaari is a former island off central Helsinki, joined by landfill, now the north end of Hernesaari, most of it inside the Hietalahti shipyard.
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Where to stay in Munkkisaari
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Munkkisaari holds one older residential block between Munkkisaarenkatu and Hernesaarenkatu, and a newer one raised between Telakkakatu and Hylkeenpyytäjänkatu in 2007 and 2008; the rest of the former island is yard, plant and storage. No hotel stands on Hylkeenpyytäjänkatu. Rooms are found across Telakkakatu in Punavuori and Eira, or further north in the Helsinki centre.
The Munkkisaari tram stop is on that same street, which puts the Bulevardi rails a few minutes away. You would take an address at this end for the shipyard cranes and the water rather than for restaurants, which sit further down the Hernesaari peninsula.
Few places to stay in Munkkisaari — most visitors book in Punavuori nearby.
About Munkkisaari
What are the main landmarks in Munkkisaari?
Two working structures define Munkkisaari. The Hietalahti shipyard, which Adolf Törngren founded in 1865, spreads over most of the former island; its covered dock basin, the only fully roofed one among Finnish yards, lies at the Hietalahti end and measures 280.5 metres by 34 metres. Ownership passed from Arctech to Helsinki Shipyard Oy in 2019 and on to the Canadian group Chantier Davie in 2023.
The Munkkisaari heating plant stands almost on the building line at Hylkeenpyytäjänkatu 1b, red facing brick over a concrete plinth, with a concrete chimney of about 80 metres beside it. Erkko Virkkunen drew it in 1968. A mural by Matti Mikkilä, Urban Energy 1, wraps the fire-water pumphouse added in 2015 and is lit by an LED strip after dark.
No museum sits inside the district, and the nearest one, the Sinebrychoff Art Museum on Bulevardi, is in Punavuori. The cruise berth that still carries the Munkkisaari name is outside it as well, at Hernematalankatu 6 on the western shore of Hernesaari.
What is the history of Munkkisaari?
A narrow strait called Matalasalmi once cut the island off from the mainland, running a little west of the line that Hylkeenpyytäjänkatu now takes, and a wooden bridge crossed it with headroom for boats. Fishermen's huts stood there in the 1800s. A bathing house for workers opened in 1874 and ran into the 1930s, and a public sauna stood nearby until the 1970s.
Bertel Jung's general plan of 1911 reserved the Munkkisaari shore for harbour work, and from that decade landfill welded the island, Hernesaari and Hernesaarenkari into one artificial peninsula. A mill was finished in 1937, a state grain store in 1955, and a Ford assembly building went up in the 1940s. Soviet bombers hit the area in February 1944.
Sewage treatment ran here until Viikinmäki opened in 1994. A city board decision of 2012 dropped the sub-area name Munkkisaari in favour of Hernesaari from the start of 2013.
Where is Munkkisaari?
Munkkisaari takes the northern end of the Hernesaari peninsula on the south-western edge of the Helsinki inner city, inside the Länsisatama district and, above that, the Ullanlinna basic district of the Uusimaa region. Telakkakatu draws the boundary against Punavuori and Eira; the harbour railway lay in a cutting down the middle of that street until it was lifted in 2008, and tram track has taken its place. Jätkäsaari lies west across Hietalahti bay.
Common questions
What is the best area to stay in Munkkisaari?
Punavuori: a room within a short walk across Telakkakatu.
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Updated September 2026