Imatra town museum and art museum are both located on the 1st floor of culture centre Virta. Imatra town museum was founded in 1981 and it’s exhibition shows the development of the region e.g industrialism and impacts to the region. The collection of the art museum works are owned by the City of Imatra and the Imatra’s Art Association (Imatran taideyhdistys).

The Saimaa Geopark visitor centre is located in Imatra’s culture centre Virta, right after the main entrance. The visitor centre offers a great deal of information about geology and the developmental history of the Saimaa area. One can dive into deep history of our nearly two billion years old bedrock by observing the diverse rock samples in the exhibition. A timeline and sample collection, covering the last 13,000 years, visualize the lake-developmental stages and humans’ early life in the Saimaa area. Several geological maps are displayed as well. The formation and strucure of the Salpauselkä ice-marginal formations are introduced with a scale model, giving a comprehensive viewpoint of the landscape-shaping forces of the Ice Age. Furthermore, the visitor centre offers information on the UNESCO Global Geoparks organization as well as Geopark destinations both in Finland and abroad. The visitor centre is a well suited place to start geohiking in the Saimaa region.

The texts and images of the visitor centre’s exhibition can be found on Saimaa Geopark’s website in the database under the heading Geology and Ancient Culture. The maps and timelines of the exhibition are also in the database in connection with the title of the Saimaa Guide section, which deals with the whole region of the Geopark area.

image: imatra.kuvat.fi