Helsinki’s Online ‘Treasure Trove’ Of 65,000 Photos Can Be Used For Free

By Mikelle Leow, 30 Apr 2021

Screenshot via Helsinki Photos

It’s no longer as easy to get the same kind of enrichment that travel provides, but if you’re yearning for a little cultural gratification from Finland, this resource site of free images might be for you.

The Helsinki City Museum actually has a website—which it calls a “treasure trove”—with 65,000 digitized photos that you can download and use for free. The Helsinki Photos database was launched in 2017, and was recently picked up by PetaPixel.

Screenshot via Helsinki Photos

These images, a growing selection from the museum’s own collection of about a million photos, date back to as early as the 1940s and are centered around Helsinki’s heritage and growth. All of them fall under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license, and can thus be used in most contexts—including commercial projects—so long as both the Helsinki City Museum and respective photographers are prominently credited. “You can share them on social media or use them on your website and in different applications. You can also freely use the photographs in your magazines, gift products or as posters or even wallpaper,” the museum notes.

This is where the line is drawn: “The photographs may be used commercially, with certain restrictions. For instance, a person’s right to decide on the commercial use of their name, photograph or other identifiable part of their identity, privacy protection rights and moral rights may limit the use of the material.” That still leaves plenty of legroom to incorporate the photos in your projects.

View some images from the online archive, and explore more here.