A city and its Jazz festival: Pori - Finland

Finnish Summer is a short season, but full of interesting events all over the country that give the chance to rediscover places we’ve never been, or we’ve skipped during our journeys.

One of these is the city of Pori, located on the west coast of Finland, and founded in 1558 by a Swedish duke, who became king of Sweden in 1568 with the name of John III. In the beginning, the residents were only 300, and they were not voluntary residents, who were relocated from other places.

Nevertheless, they soon recognized the advantages of their new city and soon started profitable trades, which the most important was the building of ships.

During the years from its foundation to modern times, Pori has suffered a few conflicts; it has been destroyed and rebuilt, but generally, it has lived a fairly quiet existence.

Nowadays the city has a population of 84318 inhabitants, which makes it the 11th largest city of Finland with a density of population of 101 inhabitants per square kilometer.

The city itself is something recommended to be visited and seen, because of its beautiful parks, cozy urban area, and summer happenings.

One of these is quite famous and attracts tourists from all over Europe.
I am talking about the Pori Jazz festival, which was established in 1966 and is one of the major jazz festivals in Europe and one of the largest cultural events in Finland. It is a festival that lasts for nine days, and it is held in July, the warmest (we are stretching here a bit) month in Finland, together with the main holiday season.

Many international artists performed here such as B. B. King, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Kanye West, Santana and yesterday Christina Aguilera.

The festival is held all over the city but mainly in Kirjurinluoto Park, which arena can hold an audience of more than 30000 people.

Pori is about 220 km away from Helsinki, but regardless this, yesterday after work we took our car and left for the concerts that were scheduled for the day, and we spend the day in the beautiful atmosphere of the park.

Despite the fact that we returned home at 3:00 am when the sun started to rise (well it didn’t really set), I considered it a great way to start the weekend, and I am wondering how could I wake up after five hours of sleep without feeling tired at all. That must be the magic of the open-air concerts.