Punkalaidun

Punkalaidun is a municipality of 2,800 people (2020) in Pirkanmaa, Finland.

Punkalaidun municipal hall

Punkalaitumenjoki (Punkalaidun River) flows through the municipality , along which most villages, including the church village, are located.

The nearest airport is Tampere-Pirkkala Airport.

• The village landscape of the center of Punkalaidun is on the National Board of Antiquities' list of nationally significant built cultural environments. The impressive cultural landscape of the Punkalaidun church area is formed by the roads following the open agricultural landscape of the riverside, the associated peasant farms and small settlements, as well as the church, the rectory, the workers' house and the elementary school as landscape highlights.

Punkalaidun Church

• Punkalaidun Church from 1774 is a wooden, west-tower church building that continues the long-standing church tradition of Western Finland. Next to the church is a parish house completed in 1954, representing post-war modernism.
• On the river side, below the church, is the so-called lower cemetery, the most significant part of which is the Heroes Cemetery. The hero statue depicting a kneeling young soldier is the sculptor Johannes Haapasalo.
• In 2009, Punkalaidun City Hall was chosen as one of the three most beautiful municipal buildings in Finland. Punkalaidun town hall was built in 1923 as a Jugend-inspired (Art Nouveau) two-storey wooden building, the first floor of which is a log.

Taikayöntie (regional roads 230 and 232) is a historically valuable tourist route and has great natural and river landscapes, as well as a cultural environment.