Leppävaara

Leppävaara (Alberga) is a district of Espoo, a city in Finland. The Rantarata rail line and the Ring Road I, the busiest road in Finland, cross in Leppävaara, thus making it a major traffic hub in the Greater Helsinki region. The Sello Shopping Centre is also located in Leppävaara. There is evidence of residence in Leppävaara already in the Stone Age. There is a burial pile from the Bronze Age in the Leppävaara sports park, near the exercise path leading to Karakallio. The medieval village hill of Konungsböle is located near the golf practice ground on Säterinniitty at the end of Leppävaarantie. The Alberga manor was founded in the area in the 1620. The Leppävaara manor is also located in the area, and the Kilo manor is located nearby. The oldest surviving building in Leppävaara is the Gransinmäki inn built in the 1830s, located on Vanha Maantie. The best known and most historically significant build is the new main building of the Alberga manor, known as "Sokerilinna" ("the sugar castle"), built in 1874 for the sugar manufacturer Feodor Kiseleff the younger. After the railway line from Helsinki to Turku was completed in 1903 Leppävaara began to develop as a manor neighbourhood. The villa known as Ylänne was built in Leppävaara. The bulk of the settlement was on the northern side of the railway and the southern side remained mostly in agricultural use. During World War I, Krepost Sveaborg, a fortification system of trenches and artillery batteries defending Helsinki was built, passing through Leppävaara. Though some of them are destroyed, there are still a lot of trenches and bunkers in the area, mainly in Vallikallio and Mäkkylänmetsä. Leppävaara was formed as a community in 1921 and it remained such until all such ones at the beginning of 1956 were abolished. In the early 1960s as well as the separating also of Leppävaara, Tapiola from Espoo was designed as a town but the plans were rejected when Espoo at the beginning of 1963 was formed on the whole as a town.