Löyly Helsinki: a modern sauna built before its neighborhood
Löyly Helsinki, a wooden sauna and restaurant on the Hernesaari waterfront, was given protected-building status only four years after it opened. The residential development that was meant to rise around it has been stalled for almost a decade, and as of 2026 Löyly still stands alone on the site set aside for redevelopment.
Löyly is one of the places Helsinki guidebooks won't stop recommending. Time put it on the World's Greatest Places list in 2018, the architecture press has covered it from every angle, and a steady stream of English-language travel writing has settled on a single phrase for it: a designer sauna by the sea. After a few visits, though, I started thinking that framing only catches half of what this place is. There are several other contexts layered underneath it, and most of them don't show up in the brochures.
Two layers: who built it, who runs it
Start with who built the place and who runs it now. Löyly broke ground in spring 2015 and opened in 2016. The two original builders were Jasper Pääkkönen, an actor who has appeared in the series Vikings, and Antero Vartia, then an entrepreneur. The City of Helsinki had put out an open call for a public sauna on the Hernesaari industrial waterfront, the idea being that the area needed something to bring people in before the planned residential redevelopment got underway. Pääkkönen and Vartia took the project on. (Source: Löyly, "Löylyn Tarina".)
The restaurant side has not been theirs to run, though. From the construction phase onward, the food and beverage operation was handed to Royal Ravintolat, one of Finland's larger restaurant groups. In 2018, Royal Ravintolat was acquired by Restamax (later renamed NoHo Partners), which is why the restaurant today is run by NoHo Partners. (Source: Sauna-lehti, October 2024.) The same year, Vartia sold his Löyly stake to Pääkkönen so he could focus on his work as a member of parliament (2015 to 2019) and the climate-focused company that became Compensate. (Source: Yle, 2018.) Today, Löyly has a two-layer structure: Pääkkönen owns it personally, and NoHo Partners, a publicly listed hospitality company, runs it. Travel guides like to call Löyly "the actor's sauna," but the server bringing your food and the sauna master tending the stove work for a different company.
Design: a mass of wood and 4,000 lamellas
The architecture is by Avanto Arkkitehdit, a Helsinki firm. The interior is by Joanna Laajisto. (Sources: Avanto Arkkitehdit project page, ArchDaily on Löyly.)
The first impression most people get from outside is probably "a mass of wood." That isn't far from the design intent. The architect Anu Puustinen has described the building as less an ordinary structure and more an artificial landform, part of the landscape. (Source: Sauna-lehti, October 2024.) More than 4,000 heat-treated pine lamellas, totaling 6,744 meters, wrap the black-box volume of the sauna and restaurant inside what the architects call a hulmu, a Finnish word for an outer cloak. The roof is walkable; you can climb up onto it.
Three saunas, and a stove in the floor
There are three public saunas. A wood-fired sauna; a smoke sauna, which is rare for a public Helsinki facility; and "Aito," a small electric sauna designed by Avanto, currently in trial operation right next to the deck where you climb down into the sea. There is also a private sauna available by reservation.
There is a detail in the stove design worth pausing on. The Finnish folklorist Sakari Pälsi formulated what he called löylyn laki, the law of löyly: a bather's toes must sit higher than the top of the stones on the stove. To make this work at Löyly, the stove designer Heikki Hyytiäinen built a heat-storage stove more than two meters tall, and Avanto sank the lower half of it below floor level. Digging the floor in order to honor a folk rule is the kind of decision that gives Löyly its character.
Here before the city block
As mentioned earlier, Löyly was meant to be the first arrival in a new neighborhood. Hernesaari sits within walking distance of central Helsinki but had been an industrial corner for decades. The City had been planning a residential redevelopment of the area since the early 2010s, and the Löyly project was framed by that plan: bring people to Hernesaari before any residential blocks went up. (Source: Löyly, "Löylyn Tarina".)
The residential plan kept tripping up. The version Helsinki's city council approved in 2021 was overturned by the Supreme Administrative Court in 2022. The City had to rework the proposal, and a new plan finally passed council in October 2025. The new plan projects 7,100 residents, 316,000 square meters of new residential floor area, and 139,000 square meters of workplace and service floor area, with construction expected to begin around 2028. (Sources: City of Helsinki: Hernesaari plan, 2025, Helsingin Uutiset, 2025.) Which means that, from its 2016 opening through this writing in May 2026, Löyly has spent a decade as the lone advance scout of a city block that was supposed to follow. If you get there and find yourself thinking there's nothing around Löyly at all, that's an accurate read. Löyly has been waiting for the city to arrive.
Heritage status, four years in
There is one more layer of inverted time. In 2020, four years after opening, Löyly was given an sr-1 designation in the city plan, which protects the building. The justification was both "high architectural quality" and "value as a symbol of the change in early-2000s Helsinki urban culture." (Source: Sauna-lehti, October 2024.) Heritage protection usually arrives a generation or two after a building has settled into its surroundings. Löyly took the reverse path: the city decided what it wanted to preserve here before the surroundings even arrived. The implicit vision is that, by the time Hernesaari has filled in with offices and apartments through the 2030s, Löyly will be at the center of it as the sauna that led the creation of the neighborhood.
Tourists, locals, and the gap between them
The last thing worth saying is the gap between what the founders intended and what's there now. In the Sauna-lehti interview, Pääkkönen says he wanted Löyly to be a place for Helsinki residents, not for tourists. (Source: Sauna-lehti, October 2024.) The same article puts the summer customer mix at roughly 70% tourists. That's an estimate from the time of reporting, not an official statistic, but the Helsinki residents I know all describe Löyly the same way: it's a tourist spot. The reading on the ground matches the number.
The interesting thing is that the gap isn't a failure. According to the official site, Löyly's mixed-gender, swimsuit-required rule was a deliberate design choice that anticipated foreign visitors who would have a hard time picturing nude mixed bathing. (Source: Löyly, "Löylyn Tarina".) Löyly was always planned as a place where tourists could also walk in. The current balance, weighted more toward tourism than originally expected, is a slightly skewed version of an idea that was always inclusive.
Designed for locals, made famous abroad before the locals could settle into it, then turned into Finland's youngest protected building by the planning system. Löyly's history with its own neighborhood is mostly still ahead of it. Once the city block actually arrives and the people who live in it can drop in for an evening sauna, the place will probably feel different again.
Sauna information
Löyly's mixed-gender public saunas are open during operating hours, but advance booking is strongly recommended.
The base ticket is €29 for two hours. The price includes a towel, a pefletti (the thin seat sheet you sit on in a sauna), shampoo, and body soap. Swimsuit rental is €8 for two hours. Swimsuits are required.
You can cool down on the terrace or jump into the Baltic year-round, weather permitting. Drinks are available from sauna reception, so you can take a lonkero or a beer out to the deck and watch the sea.
Restaurant information
True to the name, Löyly takes its restaurant seriously; this is not a place that serves instant food on the side of the sauna. You can drop in mid-sauna, eat, and head back. Restaurant-only visits are also welcomed.
Note that sauna and restaurant hours don't always match.
Mon to Thu: 11:00 to 23:00 Fri and Sat: 11:00 to midnight Sun: 11:00 to 22:00
The restaurant is occasionally closed for private events, sometimes with a loud party in full swing, so check Instagram or the website for the latest before you go.