In Helsinki, changing times can bring changing meaning to symbols, and there’s likely no better example than this monumental statue of Alexander II, Tsar of Russia and Grand Duke of Finland (among his other titles).
Erected in the early 1890s to honor the man who first defined Finland as a separate place, albeit under Russian rule, and encouraged it to develop as an autonomous region, it then became in the late 1890s a rallying point against the ‘Russification’ campaign undertaken by his successor.
Despite all the changes that followed, including independence after World War I, wars with both Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1940s and various tumults since, the ‘Liberator Emperor’ has kept his place, surrounded by the symbols of Finland: the square it sits on has the University to its left, the Senate House to its right, and the Lutheran Cathedral behind it.
An image from about 1906
