Every design for Raahe

On Pekkatori, the market square at the heart of Old Raahe, the corners are closed off, a quirk of the Renaissance grid the surveyor Claes Claesson laid out for the young town. Around it, wooden houses line straight streets of equal width, rebuilt after a great fire to new rules that kept flames from spreading. Raahen museo, Kruununmakasiinimuseo and Soveliuksen talo keep the merchant and seafaring past on show, and Wanha Apteekki belongs to the same old town.

Raahe feels like a place that has had to argue for its existence. Count Per Brahe gave it a charter and later his own name, Brahestad, and when Oulu and Kokkola grew jealous of its trade they had it ordered closed; the townspeople's pleas kept it alive. It went on to become a harbour town, a school town and an industrial town, and it later took in its neighbours Saloinen, Pattijoki and Vihanti.

Coming home along the Gulf of Bothnia, it is the low skyline of Wooden Raahe and the islands sheltering the bay that tell you which town you are in.