The Three Smiths

The Three Smiths is a bronze group cast in 1932 by Felix Nylund in the centre of Helsinki, opposite the Stockmann department store on Mannerheimintie. Three nude smiths swing their hammers in unison over a shared anvil, a monument to the Finnish craftsmen who built early-20th-century Helsinki. Commissioned by the Kullervo Pakkala family, the work is a piece of dynamic classicism with echoes of Rodin. The square is named after the sculpture, Kolmen sepan aukio, the Square of the Three Smiths, and is one of the city's most-used meeting points. Shrapnel scars on the plinth from the Winter War of 1939/40 are still visible, and locals point them out as a small civic memory.