Tampere in 3 days

Lenin Museum (Leninin Museo — in the Tampere Workers' Hall (Tampere Työväentalo), in the Frenckellin Aukio square; the only permanent Lenin museum outside Russia; the significance of Tampere for Lenin: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) visited Tampere in December 1905 for the Bolshevik party conference at the Workers' Hall — his first public political appearance; at the same conference, Lenin met Ioseb Jughashvili (Stalin) for the first time (the two men whose decisions would determine the fate of the Soviet Union met for the first time in Tampere, Finland); the museum collection documents Lenin's life, the development of Bolshevism, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Soviet state; the most significant exhibit: the Workers' Hall meeting room where the December 1905 Bolshevik conference took place — the room where the encounter between Lenin and Stalin occurred; the museum maintains an even-handed approach to its subject (neither hagiographic nor condemnatory but historically analytical).

Vapriikki Museum Centre (the cultural and museum complex in the 1898 Tampella engineering works factory building; the most significant industrial heritage building in Tampere; the factory (the Tampella metalworks manufactured paper machines, turbines and steam engines that were exported across Europe) was decommissioned in the 1990s and converted to the Vapriikki museum complex in 1996; the museum complex contains: the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame (the Ice Hockey Museum — the most comprehensive collection of Finnish ice hockey history (Finland is the world's finest ice hockey nation by rate of production of NHL players per capita — Finland has 5.5 million people and produces more NHL players per capita than any other country); the Natural History Museum of Tampere (the regional natural history collection with the Ice Age megafauna of Finland); the Shoe Museum (the most comprehensive footwear collection in Finland); the Tampere Historical Museum (the city's history from the Tammerkoski falls settlement to the industrial era)); the factory building architecture (the 1898 red-brick, timber-framed factory with the original crane rails still on the ceiling).

Särkänniemi (the Tampere amusement park on the Näsijärvi shore — the most visited amusement and leisure centre in the Tampere region; the peninsula into Lake Näsijärvi has the roller coasters (the Tornado — the most intense ride; the Tornado is a 65-metre loop-the-loop steel coaster), the Aquarium (the freshwater fish of Finnish lakes and the saltwater tropical fish), the Planetarium, and the Näsinneula Tower (the 168 m observation tower — the tallest structure in Finland and one of the tallest in Scandinavia; the restaurant at 134 m makes one full rotation per hour, offering the full panorama of both Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi lakes and the Tampere city industrial skyline and the Pyynikki ridge); the dolphins (the Särkänniemi dolphin pool was the only dolphin facility in Finland and closed in 2012 after a campaign for dolphin liberation — the 8 dolphins were transferred to a Spanish park; the pool building now houses other attractions)); the lakeside park walk connecting Särkänniemi to the Rajaportti sauna.

Tampere evening culture: the Laukontori and Ratinanranta beer gardens (the lakeside outdoor bars that are the social centre of Tampere summer evenings from May to September; the Finns' relationship with summer outdoor drinking is comparable to the Mediterranean café culture — the long summer evenings (sunset after 22:00 in June) create an outdoor social atmosphere that transforms the otherwise reserved Finnish character; the Tampere "mämmilä" (a Tampere slang term for the outdoor bar tables by the lake)); the grillikioski (the Finnish grillikioski — the sausage kiosk; the mustamakkara (the "black sausage" of Tampere — a pork blood sausage unique to the Tampere tradition (larger and less spicy than the British black pudding; the mustamakkara is grilled and served with lingonberry jam and cold milk — the authentic Tampere street food combination); the mustamakkara is officially listed by the Finnish Cultural Foundation as one of the significant food cultural heritage items of Finland; sold at the Laukontori kiosks year-round).

Tampere Cathedral (Tampereen Tuomiokirkko — built 1902-1907; designed by Lars Sonck in the Finnish National Romantic style (the use of the local granite and the rounded turrets); the most significant Finnish National Romantic church building; the interior frescoes by Hugo Simberg (1873-1917 — the Finnish Symbolist artist whose work is the most consistently unusual in Finnish art; the commission for the cathedral interior was given to Simberg in 1905 and the resulting frescoes caused a public scandal at the consecration in 1907): the Garden of Death (Kuoleman puutarha — the three skeleton figures (Death personified) tending flowers in a garden with the same care as living gardeners; one of the most celebrated painted images in Finland); the Wounded Angel (Haavoittunut enkeli — the blindfolded angel being carried on a stretcher by two boys through a bleak Finnish landscape — originally a standalone painting (1903), the cathedral version (1905-1906) being the large-scale fresco on the north wall; the most reproduced image in Finnish art history).

Nokia (the town 15 km southwest of Tampere — the original Nokia Oy (founded 1865 by Fredrik Idestam as a pulp mill on the Nokianvirta River, named after the local Nokianvirta (Nokia River) and the nokia ground nut plant; the company name Nokia refers to the sable (the dark-furred animal once native to Finland, depicted in the Nokia town coat of arms); the Nokia factory expanded into rubber goods (Nokia Rubber Works, 1898) and cable manufacturing (Nokia Cable Works, 1912) before the three companies (Nokia Ab, Finnish Rubber Works and Nokia Cable Works) merged in 1967 to form Nokia Corporation; the company's pivot to mobile telecommunications came in the 1990s under CEO Jorma Ollila; Nokia dominated global mobile phone manufacturing 1998-2011 (the best-selling mobile phone of all time: Nokia 1100, 250 million units sold; the Nokia 3310 (2000) — the most durable consumer electronics product in history, universally acknowledged as indestructible)); the Nokianvirta River viewpoint (the falls on the Nokia River where the original Nokia pulp mill stood).

Lake Pyhäjärvi Runoilijan Tielle (Poet's Way — the historic steamship route from Tampere south across Lake Pyhäjärvi (the 154 km² lake directly south of the Tampere city centre; the lake name means "Holy Lake" in Finnish — the Lake Pyhäjärvi is one of the cleanest large lakes in Finland, with visibility to 5 metres in summer); the Poet's Way cruise (the tourist steamship route follows the route that the Finnish national poet Zacharias Topelius and later the Finnish writers Aleksis Kivi and J.L. Runeberg used as inspiration for the Finnish landscape poetry of the National Romantic period; the route passes through the Pyhäjärvi island archipelago (the lake has 150+ islands, including the inhabited farming islands of the Sääksmäki area), the Visavuori museum (the studio of the sculptor Emil Wikström, Finnish National Romantic sculptor, on the island of Visavuori — accessible by cruise from Tampere)); the steamship fleet (the S/S Tarjanne (built 1908) is the oldest steamship in regular service in Finland).

Pispala (the working-class neighbourhood on the ridge between Lake Näsijärvi and Lake Pyhäjärvi, west of Pyynikki — the most atmospheric residential neighbourhood in Tampere; the coloured wooden houses on the steep hillside terraces, built in the early 20th century by the factory workers of the Finlayson, Tampella and Nokia companies; Pispala was technically outside the Tampere city boundaries until 1966 (avoiding city taxes) and developed its own working-class identity and community culture; the neighbourhood produced a disproportionate number of Finnish artistic talents (Mika Waltari (author of Sinuhe the Egyptian) lived in Pispala; the Pispala neighbourhood is the most socially rich in Tampere, with the community life organised around the Rajaportti sauna, the neighbourhood association events and the allotment gardens on the hillside); the view from the Pispala ridge at sunset (the 360° view of both lakes from the highest point in the neighbourhood — the finest residential view in Tampere).