Sibelius Monument

Eila Hiltunen's organ-pipe abstract memorial to Finland's national composer

Eila Hiltunen's 1967 monument to Jean Sibelius, in a small park on the Töölö Bay. Six hundred hollow steel tubes welded into a wave-shaped structure that — depending on which side you stand on — looks like organ pipes, ice, or a cresting wave. A separate cast bronze bust of the composer sits beside it.

Reachable on foot from Töölö or by bus 24 from the centre. The park is part of a longer waterfront walk that takes in the rowing harbour, the Hietaniemi cemetery (where Sibelius is buried), and Hietaniemi beach.

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The monument was so controversial when unveiled in 1967 — too abstract for the conservatives, not abstract enough for the modernists — that the sculptor added a bust of Sibelius beside it as a compromise. Both pieces now stand together in a park overlooking the bay.