Lappeenranta

People have lived around Kauskila, south of the present centre, for about 2,000 years, and in the Middle Ages it was one of the main Karelian settlements of the area. The town itself began as a market on a headland jutting into Lake Saimaa, called Lapvesi and later Lappee; its trade grew so important that the Governor-General Per Brahe the Younger asked for town privileges, and Queen Christina of Sweden chartered the town in 1649, when it was an important port for tar. Its Swedish name, Villmanstrand, contains the "wild man" who still appears on its coat of arms.

After the Treaty of Nystad in 1721 the town found itself on the new border with Russia. From 1721 to 1743 it was the capital of Kymmenegård and Nyslott County, and Sweden built its fortress, mostly between 1722 and 1728. In 1741 a Russian army defeated the Swedes at the Battle of Villmanstrand and pillaged and burned the town, and by the Treaty of Turku it passed to Russia as part of "Old Finland". The Orthodox church in the fortress dates from this Russian period, completed in 1785. In 1812 Alexander I joined Old Finland to the Grand Duchy of Finland, and in 1856 the Saimaa Canal opened, linking the lake with the Gulf of Finland near Vyborg.

The airport opened in 1918, making it the oldest still operating in Finland. After the Second World War Vyborg and the Karelian Isthmus went to the Soviet Union, leaving Lappeenranta a border city. It absorbed Lappee and Lauritsala in 1967, Nuijamaa in 1989, Joutseno in 2009 and Ylämaa in 2010. Russian visitors made it the second most visited Finnish city for Russian tourists, until the border crossings were closed in late 2023.

The city's identity is shaped by the lake and the border. Lake Saimaa makes it a summer city of terraces, beaches and boats, and the yearly sandcastle at the harbour — the biggest in Finland — has become a symbol of the season. The fortress quarter, with its museums, artists' workshops, Orthodox church and cafés, is the cultural heart, and hosts the two-day Night of the Fortress festival each August; the Lappeenranta Ballet Gala follows later that month, and the city holds an annual national singing contest.

Sport is strong for a city of its size. SaiPa plays in Finland's top ice hockey league, Veiterä have been Finnish bandy champions five times, and the city hosted the first Women's Bandy World Championship in 2004 and again in 2014. Basketball has a long local following, and the women's team Catz has won the national championship four times in a row.

The universities have given the city an international side: LUT University and LAB University of Applied Sciences together have about 13,000 students from 68 countries. Decades of Russian visitors left Cyrillic signs on some shops, and Russian is still the most common language after Finnish. Lappeenranta has also worked to brand itself as a green city, reaching the finals of WWF's Earth Hour City Challenge in 2014.

The city of Lappeenranta has about 73,200 inhabitants, the 13th largest municipality in Finland, and the sub-region about 88,100. About 87.9 per cent speak Finnish as their first language and 11.9 per cent another language, led by Russian, Chinese and English; in 2024 about 11 per cent of residents had a foreign background, the same as the national average.

The main employers include the city, LUT University, the regional health district, the armed forces — the Army Academy is here — and industry: Fazer, the forest company UPM-Kymmene, the limestone producer Nordkalk, the insulation maker Paroc, Metso Outotec and the railway company VR. Tourism and retail long relied on Russian shoppers, who made the city a rival to Helsinki for tax-free sales, until all the border crossings were closed in late 2023.

Residents live in the centre and in suburbs spread along the lakeshore, from Skinnarila's campus to Lauritsala, with villages in the merged rural districts. Summer evenings are spent at the harbour, Myllysaari beach and lakeside cottages; in winter the lake freezes and people skate, ski, sledge and ride snowmobiles.

Lappeenranta's own speciality is the meat pie. Kiosks on the Market Square and at the harbour sell vety — "hydrogen" — a meat pie with ham, boiled egg and condiments, and atomi — "atom" — which has either ham or egg but not both. Ask for a "vetyatomi" and most grill kiosks in Finland will understand.

South Karelia shares the eastern Finnish taste for rye and pastries. Karelian pies, with a rye crust and rice filling topped with egg butter, are everyday food, alongside rye bread, potatoes, fish from Saimaa and forest berries and mushrooms. The confectioner Fazer is one of the city's major employers.

Cafés and restaurants cluster in the centre and the fortress, where historic houses hold small cafés, and in summer the harbour's terraces fill with people eating and drinking by the lake. The weekday lunch menu is how most residents eat out, and large hypermarkets on the edge of town supply everything else.