Old Raatesalmi – from a poor house to a festival hall
The main building of the Old Raatesalmi farm, which is part of Kuusamo’s Kantokylä, built in 1928, served as a poor house, i.e., a municipal home, from 1928 to 1971. After that, the building was an industrial farm until 1989. The badly damaged main building and the other buildings of the farm were transferred from the town to private ownership and tourist use in the early 2000s. Since then, the farm has been in private ownership, with its surroundings and buildings a culturally-historically valuable restoration site and in tourist use.
Raatesalmi estate (now Old Raatesalmi) is located on the north side of Lake Kuusamojärvi in Puutteenkylä. The distance to Kuusamo city centre is 12 kilometres by road, only a few minutes by boat.