Every design for Rauma

Rauma is known for Vanha Rauma, Old Rauma, the largest unified area of wooden houses in the Nordic countries and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and for lace, the sea and a dialect all its own. The town, Raumo in Swedish, lies on the Gulf of Bothnia between Pori and Turku and has held town rights since the Middle Ages. The Bronze Age burial site of Sammallahdenmäki gives it a second World Heritage listing.

Ask anyone from Rauma about home and the dialect, Rauman giäl, comes up sooner or later. Sailors brought words back from Swedish, English, French and beyond, at a time when the town had the largest fleet of sailing ships in Finland, and many of the Neo-Renaissance facades in the old town were paid for by the sea. Museums such as Marela and Kirsti keep that seafaring story, and the old cranes of Museonosturit still stand over it.

On the map, the old wooden centre and the long coastline are both there, and anyone who grew up in Rauma can find their own street in a second.