Rauma cruise port guide

About Rauma

Rauma is a historic port city on the western coast of Finland with a UNESCO-listed Old Town (Vanha Rauma), the best-preserved medieval wooden town center in the Nordic countries. The city is also home to the Rauma Shipyard, renowned for building icebreakers, cruise ships, and polar research vessels.

Vanha Rauma consists of about 600 individual buildings, mostly 18th and 19th-century wooden structures painted in ochre, red, and yellow, along the original medieval street layout. The local Rauma dialect (rauman murre) is so distinctive it is sometimes described as a separate language. The city holds Finland's largest lace festival each July—a tradition dating from the 17th century when Flemish lacemakers settled here—with thousands of participants in period dress filling the Old Town streets. The Marela and Kirsti Museums occupy typical old merchant houses.