Rovaniemi

The administrative capital and commercial centre of Lapland, six kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, set between the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara where the Ounasjoki joins the Kemijoki. It is the second-largest city in Northern Finland after Oulu and, with Helsinki, one of the two towns that carry Finnish tourism abroad, CNN named it in 2024 one of the best places in the world to spend Christmas. The city and the surrounding rural municipality were merged into one entity on 1 January 2006.