Savonlinna: the castle on the lake of a thousand islets
Built among the lakes of Saimaa, Finland's largest lake system, Savonlinna preserves a medieval castle on an islet and hosts a celebrated opera festival.
The center can be comfortably visited on foot, dominated by the castle on the lake dotted with a thousand islets.
The Castle of Olavinlinna, a medieval fortress on a rocky islet, hosts one of Northern Europe's most celebrated opera festivals every summer.
Just steps away, the Savo Provincial Museum tells the history of traditional navigation on the Saimaa lake system's historic steam paddle-wheelers.
Continuing by boat among the Saimaa Lakes, Finland's largest lake system, you observe uninhabited islets and ringed seals, an endangered endemic species.
Toward evening, historic paddle-wheelers offer panoramic cruises among islets illuminated by Nordic evening sunlight.
The Saimaa ringed seal, endemic exclusively to this Finnish lake system, remains one of the world's rarest seal species, with only a few hundred individuals surviving.
Olavinlinna Castle, founded in 1475 as an outpost against Russian expansion, remains Europe's northernmost existing castle built entirely of stone, with walls up to five meters thick.
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