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Alvar Aalto

Vyborg’s Aalto library reopens after 20-year renovation

An iconic Alvar Aalto building that has housed Vyborg’s library since the 1930s has reopened after renovations that lasted for more than twenty years and cost some eight million euros.

Viipurin Alvar Aalto -kirjaston julkisivu.
Viipurin Alvar Aalto -kirjaston julkisivu. Image: Maija Kairamo

The library was opened in 1935, when Vyborg was still a part of Finland. It is considered an icon of international modernist architecture, and among the most important pre-war Aalto buildings.

For a decade after the second world war the building fell into disrepair, before a renovation saw it brought back into use in 1961.

Petr Moseyevitch Rozenblum and after him Aleksandr Mihailovich Shver oversaw the 1955-61 renovation, but a lack of access to the original plans hampered their work.

The current renovation works started in 1991. It was an international effort, with help from foundations and charities in Finland and Russia, along with both governments.