Pargas

Pargas (Finnish: Parainen) is a town and municipality of Finland, in the Archipelago Sea, the biggest archipelago in the world by the number of islands, 50,000. The big limestone mine in Pargas is the base of the main industry and except for the central parts, the municipality is still mostly rural. Pargas is located in Åboland in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Southwest Finland region. It was created as Väståboland on 1 January 2009 in Southwest Finland, when the municipalities of Pargas, Nagu, Korpo, Houtskär and Iniö were merged into a single municipality. The municipality has a population of 14,712 (31 December 2025) and covers an area of 5,548.17 square kilometres (2,142.16 sq mi) of which 4,666.46 km2 (1,801.73 sq mi) is water. The population density is 16.64 inhabitants per square kilometre (43.1/sq mi). Pargas is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of 42% Finnish speakers, 53% Swedish speakers, and 5% speakers of other languages.