Loviisa

Sister cities

• Hillerød
• Haapsalu City
• Karlskrona Municipality
• Varash
• Paks
• Ólafsfjörður
• Kahramanmaraş
• Horten Municipality

History

The town of Degerby was founded on the grounds of the Degerby horse stable in Pernå in 1745 as a frontier and fortress town. Eastern Finland needed a new staple town because the eastern border had shifted in the 1743 Treaty of Åbo. The only staple town in eastern Finland, Hamina, was left beyond the border. King Adolf Frederick of Sweden visited Degerby in 1752 and renamed the town as Loviisa after his wife, Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. The first mayor of Loviisa from 1747 to 1765 was Jacob af Forselles, who had fled from Hamina and bought the Petjärvi (Strömfors) ironworks together with Anders Nohrström. In 1748 construction of the Loviisa fortress started, but it soon ground to a halt because of financial difficulties in the kingdom of Sweden. Only part of the outer battlements were constructed. The bastions Rosen and Ungern to the east of the current city centre serve as reminders of the history of the fortress town. The Svartholm fortress to the south of the town was built at the same time as the Loviisa fortress. This marine fortress was meant to protect the town from the seaside and provide a safe harbour for the coastal fleet of Sweden. The Swedish era in Svartholm ended in 1808 when the fortress surrendered to the Russians almost without resistance. The year 1855 during the Crimean War was a dramatic time in Loviisa. Late in the evening on 5 July a fire broke out in the town, which destroyed a large part of the old town blocks in the centre. As well as about 70 residential buildings, the wooden church of Loviisa was also destroyed in the fire. After the fire there was a proposal to move the town to the south, but the Imperial Senate decided in April 1856 to rebuild Loviisa at its original site. The reconstruction was done according to Ernst Lohrmann's…

Geography

Loviisa is located 77 kilometres to the east of Helsinki. The closest neighbouring municipalities are Porvoo to the west and Kotka to the east. Of the surface area of the municipality of Loviisa, 819.81 square kilometres are land, 25.83 square kilometres are inland waters and 905.88 square kilometres are sea. The land area of Loviisa is larger than that of Porvoo or Kotka, and even larger than those of Helsinki, Vantaa and Espoo put together. There are about forty lakes in the municipality, of which the largest is Hopjärvi (Tammijärvi is even larger but only a small part of it is located in Loviisa). Other large lakes include Lappominjärvi, Sarvalaxträsket, Särkjärvi and Teutjärvi. The rivers of Koskenkylänjoki, Loviisanjoki and Taasianjoki, as well as the western branches of the Kymi river run through Loviisa. The Finnish Museum Board has declared the Esplanadi area in Loviisa around the market square as a nationally significant cultural area. Esplanadi has also been chosen as the cultural landscape of the year in the Western Kymi cultural road in 2019. The principal buildings in the area include the pink city hall (Georg Theodor Chiewitz 1862), the Neo-Gothic Loviisa church (Georg Theodor Chiewitz and Julius Basilier 1865) and Finland's oldest surviving wooden social club (Georg Theodor Chiewitz 1863 and Selim A. Lindqvist 1907). At the same time, a new large residential area was planned to the Harmaakallio area to the west of the central conurbation, but only a small part of it has been completed. A new residential area named Kuningattarenranta is being built on the eastern shore of the Loviisanlahti bay, which will host the 2023 event of the Asuntomessut fair. According to the definition given by the Finnish Statistics Centre, Loviisa has seven conurbations in…