Uusikaupunki

Uusikaupunki (ˈuːsiˌkɑu̯puŋki; Nystad, nyːstɑːd) is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located in the Southwest Finland region, northwest of Turku and south of Pori. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is inland water. The population density is . The municipality is unilingually Finnish. Both its Finnish and Swedish names translate literally to "new town". The original name of the main village that was incorporated into Uusikaupunki was Kalainen (roughly translated from Finnish as "rich in fish"). The surrounding region, and especially the neighboring town of Kalanti, which merged with Uusikaupunki in 1993, was already a lively marketplace for wooden objects and salt in the early Middle Ages. Uusikaupunki was founded to legalize this trade. Uusikaupunki is located in the Vakka-Suomi sub-region on the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. The Sirppu River (Sirppujoki) flows through the town and flows into the reservoir of Uusikaupunki in the northern part of the town. The freshwater pool was built in 1965 when the bays of Velhovesi and Ruotsinvesi were dammed from the sea. The area of the basin is about 40 km2, and the town and part of Vakka-Suomi get their domestic water from it. The acidity of the freshwater basin has caused some fish deaths as well as an overgrowth of aquatic plants. In 2011, the Bothnian Sea National Park was established in the outer archipelago of Uusikaupunki. The area, named Finland's largest marine national park, begins in the south of the Kustavi archipelago and ends in the north in the Merikarvia archipelago. The center of Uusikaupunki is built according to the so-called "grid plan layout" and is one of the best-preserved Empire-style wooden house blocks in the country. Today, there are a total of 40 blocks left. Because of this, the area is characterized by wide streets and large blocks with the narrow alleys. In a town plan drawn up in 1649, there were 27 blocks in the town center that required residential buildings to be built.