Where to Stay in Karkkila, Uusimaa

Karkkila is known as a foundry town of Uusimaa, its life long set by the Högfors ironworks that grew in this corner of southern Finland. Iron made the town. The Suomen Valimomuseo, the national foundry museum, keeps the craft of casting that built the place, while the Karkkilan ruukkimuseo Senkka and the Karkkila-Högforsin työläismuseo hold the works and the workers' past.

The wooden Karkkilan kirkko stands above the town, and the Punaisten muistomerkki recalls the divided years of the early century.

The Suomen Valimomuseo is the landmark that tells the town's story, the national foundry museum that keeps the casting craft of the old Högfors ironworks in this corner of southern Finland. Nearby the Karkkilan ruukkimuseo Senkka and the Karkkila-Högforsin työläismuseo hold the works and the workers' past. Iron runs through it all.

The wooden Karkkilan kirkko stands above the town as its parish church, and the Punaisten muistomerkki recalls the dead of the divided years, the whole set in the forest-and-lake country of Uusimaa around Karkkila.

Karkkila's history is the history of iron. The town grew from the Högfors ironworks, set up to cast and forge in the forest-and-lake country of Uusimaa, and the works drew labour, housing and a whole community to the wooded ground of southern Finland. Iron came before the town.

A works village rose around the furnaces and the foundry, its working life now gathered in the Suomen Valimomuseo, the Karkkilan ruukkimuseo Senkka and the Karkkila-Högforsin työläismuseo. The industrial community shaped the town's modern course. The divided years of the early century cut hard through this works population, and the dead of that conflict are remembered in the Punaisten muistomerkki.

Karkkila was chartered as a town in 1932, the works village formally a town of Uusimaa, with the wooden Karkkilan kirkko raised above the streets as its parish church. Casting and metalwork carried the place through the decades that followed, and Karkkila settled into its identity as a foundry town of southern Finland, its iron past kept in its museums.

Karkkila lies in the forest-and-lake country of north-western Uusimaa, in southern Finland, a small town set among the woods. Lakes, low ridges and pinewoods spread across the municipality, the town centre gathered on the old ironworks ground with the wooden Karkkilan kirkko above it. The land lies low and wooded.

The works that became the Suomen Valimomuseo sit at the heart of the town, the forests of southern Finland running out on every side toward the larger towns of Uusimaa.

Karkkila has a cool continental climate, its seasons set by the forests and lakes of north-western Uusimaa. Winters are cold and snowy, frost gripping the woods and the lakes around the town from early in the season until the spring thaw. Summers are warm and long.

The southern Finnish daylight warms the pinewoods and the water through the growing season around Karkkila, the season when visitors come to the old foundry town and the cottages in the forest fill.

Karkkila sits at a road junction in the forests of north-western Uusimaa, and the car is the usual way in. No railway serves the town, so most travellers drive in from the larger towns of southern Finland along the main roads that cross the region. The woods close in on the route.

Bus links reach Karkkila along those roads, joining the foundry town to the rest of Uusimaa, and visitors from farther off come through the bigger towns before the last stretch to the old ironworks ground.