Part of a sign at the 1952 men's village in Käpylä.
Helsinki has many olympic villages. One was built for the 1940 olympics but it was needed during and after WW II as Finland had to relocate about 400 000 persons (10% of the population) from the areas that no longer were part of Finland.
Currently windows are being renovated at the 1940 olympic village.
Men’s 1952 olympic village was built across the road of the 1940 village. Today regular people live in both of these villages in Käpylä. In Finnish the 1940 village is called Olympiakylä (Olympic Village) and the 1952 men’s village is called Kisakylä (Games Village).
Games of 2008 at the 1952 men's village.
At that time a separate village was allocated for the women. Originally women were supposed to be staying at Otaniemi but East-Block countries wanted to be separated from the others so it was given to them instead. This village was the first phase of what would later become a residental area called Teekkarikylä for Helsinki University of Technology students (HUT). HUT moved to Otaniemi a few years after the games in 1955.
Women from non-East-Block countries stayed at sairaanhoito-opisto (nursing school) in Meilahti.
Finnish athletes stayed at Santahamina garrison. What a waste, olympics in your own country and then they separate you from the other athletes! Finns who took part in sailing shared their homes with other sailors. That sounds much better. Portuguese on the other hand stayed at their own ship. This had been quite typical earlier in the olympic history.
Soviet Union had plans to fly their athletes from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) daily to Helsinki just for their own events but fortunately they didn’t use the plan.
And this didn’t even cover all the accomodation arrangements for the athletes.
Very topical! I have stayed at the Youth Hostel in Helsinki’s stadium. Excellent!
Sydney Daily Photo