Lohja Region

This guided tour starts with coffee in the old granary at Koivula Manor. We hear about the manor’s history, visit a handicraft shop and a smithy. We visit Ojamo Manor, built in the Russian Empire style close to Lohjanjärvi lake. Ojamo is well known as the location of Finland’s oldest iron-ore mine. In addition to the manor house, other buildings on the estate include accommodation for a farm labourer, a cowshed built in 1850 using spoil from the mine workings and a hut for the mine workers. There are also mineshafts, the deepest of which is 43 metres below the surface of the lake.

This tour starts with a guided visit to the Church of Saint Lauri in Lohja, Finland’s third-largest greystone church. The building’s unusually rich collection of wall paintings make it the country’s pre-eminent monument of church architecture from the Middle Ages. We continue to the village of Sammatti to visit Paikkarin Torppa, the birthplace of Elias Lönnrot, compiler of the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. Sammatti’s beautiful church was built in 1755 and is one of the oldest wooden churches in Finland that is used all year round.

This guided trip begins from Vironperä. During the tour, we discover more about the late Johannes Virolainen’s remarkable life in national politics, his work with people from Karelia, and his time he spent living as a writer and farmer with his wife Kyllikki in Vironperä. At the Alitalo Winery, we learn about apple cultivation in Lohja and the worlds of apple wine and apple cider. The thousands of apple trees growing on the estate and the farm animals create a unique experience in the middle of nature.