Kuopio

One of the major centres of Eastern Finland, alongside Joensuu, spread over 4,326 square kilometres of which 719.85 are water and half is forest, and yet, because everyone lives close together, the second most densely populated city in Finland. Successive mergers have folded in much of the surrounding countryside since 1969; Nilsiä pushed the population past 100,000 in 2013, and when Maaninka joined in 2015 Kuopio became Finland’s largest milk-producing municipality. Tahkovuori, the big tourist centre, is within the same boundary.