Pirkkala

From Free net encyclopedia

Pirkkala (Birkala in Swedish) is a municipality of Finland.

It is located some 10 km south-west from Tampere in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Pirkanmaa region. The municipality has a population of 14,781 (as 31st of June 2005) and covers an area of 103.86 km² of which 22.37 km² is water. The population density is 175.8 inhabitants per km². Pirkkala is currently the fastest growing municipality in Pirkanmaa region.

The municipality is unilingually Finnish.

Tampere-Pirkkala airport is located in south-west Pirkkala and is currently the second most important international airport after Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.

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History

The old Suur-Pirkkala (Great-Pirkkala) is known in old writings from 14th century, and it occupied over half of Pirkanmaa region nowadays populated by about 360.000 habitants. Suur-Pirkkala began to split when new parishes and municipalities were founded. In the year 1919 the remainings of Suur-Pirkkala were splitted into Pohjois- and Eteläis-Pirkkala (Northern and Southern). In 1938 the name of Northern-Pirkkala was changed into the city of Nokia and Southern-Pirkkala restored its original Pirkkala name.

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