In recent years, the Alvar Aalto Foundation has put a lot of effort into developing information services for international publics interested in travelling to Alvar Aalto sites.

For the first time, the Visit Alvar Aalto online service brings together at one address all the Aalto sites open to visitors, and the available services. There are sites, maps and programme suggestions for points along the Alvar Aalto Route, which has been designed together with experts from more than twenty Alvar Aalto Cities. The service is available in English, Finnish, Russian and Japanese.

Practical information now more prominent

The Alvar Aalto Route online service currently lists 28 tours to 25 Alvar Aalto Cities in Europe. In addition to travel itineraries, visit.alvaraalto.fi profiles 59 sites designed by Alvar Aalto’s architect’s office. More than a hundred service providers, most of them small tourism businesses, cater for, host and guide visitors along the route.

The online service is now even easier to use than before. The mobile user interface and maps have been updated, and new Alvar Aalto sites in several European countries have been added alongside the Finnish ones. “Site opening hours and booking details are better displayed, more language versions have been produced, and there is greater collaboration with travel agencies. There are lots of tour itinerary suggestions that combine experiences of nature with world-famous architecture. The Aalto Tours represent sustainable tourism, both in their philosophy and implementation,” says Noora Kiili of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, who is in charge of producing the service.

Internationally renowned destinations await travellers

International tourists have previously been the biggest visitor group at the Foundation-run sites in Munkkiniemi in Helsinki and the Muuratsalo Experimental House near Jyväskylä. “This year’s situation is different. We hope that new publics will discover our unique museum sites, Studio Aalto and the Aalto House, which they can view with a guide in small groups,” says Alvar Aalto Foundation Managing Director Tommi Lindh.

“The Foundation strongly believes that rarities of architecture tourism, in other words, special sites with a small, limited public, can provide a safe service, particularly this summer. There is no real substitute for the spatial experience of architecture gained by actually visiting the site,” says Managing Director Lindh.

Further information
Alvar Aalto Foundation
Producer Noora Kiili
+358 40 976 7810
noora.kiili@alvaraalto.fi