RAJAPORTINSAUNA-ARKISTO
Rajaportti Sauna Archive
In this archive, one can receive information and hear stories from Rajaportti sauna and Tampere's other public saunas in videos. There are a lot of photos, especially from the year 1989 onwards, when Pispala Sauna Association was founded. And there is a multitude of articles and documents gathered over the years to explore, related to saunas.
At best, in Tampere, there were well over 100 public saunas. Especially after the war, the town councel took notice of developing "the sauna conditions in the town" - the expression of which was the synonym for public saunas - and had built big "sauna houses". One would have saunas nearly in every street corner, and for many generations, going to public sauna was the most common and everyday thing to do.
For the most of the people in the town, saunas were the only place, where to wash and clean up oneself. But saunas were not only bathing centres, but also social centres. Mothers were taking care of each other's children, and everybody stayed online, what was happening locally and globally, while discussing of the news, when sitting in the warm wave of heat with other people. Fairly often one would hear great stories, while sweating there.
Unfortunately, this site is not yet available in English, let alone in some other language. Our hopes and efforts are, that at least parts of this site could be translated in the future in to other languages The videos with photos and stories contain fairly detailed, down-to-earth - and funny - descriptions of the history of Rajaportti Sauna, and we would love to share it with other nationalities, including the videos later with subtitles. But for the time being, you will just have to be happy listening and reading the awkward sounding language of ours.
