Facts About Tampere
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Tampere is a city in Pirkanmaa, southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in the Nordic countries.
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Tampere was founded as a market place on the banks of the Tammerkoski channel in 1775 by Gustav III of Sweden.
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Tampere was granted full city rights, on 1 October 1779.
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In 2007, Tampere switched to a new model of government. Since then, a mayor and four deputy mayors have been chosen for a period of two years by the city council. The mayor also becomes the seat of the city council for the duration of the tenure.
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Tampere has two additional “friendship cities”: León, Nicaragua & Mwanza, Tanzania.
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Tampere is twinned with:Brașov, Romania; Chemnitz, Germany; Essen, Germany; Kaunas, Lithuania; Kiev, Ukraine; Klaksvík, Faroe Islands; Kópavogur, Iceland; Linz, Austria; Łódź, Poland; Miskolc, Hungary; Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; Norrköping, Sweden; Odense, Denmark; Olomouc, Czech Republic; Syracuse, United States; Tartu, Estonia; Trondheim, Norway & Guangzhou, China.
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Finland’s largest glass sculpture, owned by the City of Tampere, “Pack Ice / The Mirror of the Sea” by the renowned artist Timo Sarpaneva, was installed in the entrance lobby of the downtown shopping mall KoskiKeskus until it was moved to a warehouse.
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Tampere is also home to one of the last museums in the world dedicated to Vladimir Lenin.
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Tampere ostensibly has a long-standing mutual feud with the city of Turku, the first capital of Finland. This hostility is largely expressed in-jokes in one city about the other; prominent targets are the traditional Tampere food, mustamakkara, the state of the Aura River in Turku, and the regional accents.
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Three of these institutions, TUT, UTA, and TAMK are merging into a new Tampere University at the beginning of 2019.