Kangasala is known for its mansions, such as Liuksiala, where the Swedish queen Karin Månsdotter lived as a widow, and Wääksy.

At that time, the waters of Kuohu Spring (Kuohunlähde) were believed to have healing powers on those who ventured into it and Kangasala became known among tourists as a place to rest.

The golden age of spa tourism lasted about a hundred years, as interest in health springs began to decline in the 1840s.

Amongst university students, wandering their homeland's natural environment became a way of showing patriotic love.

In 1775, the king of Sweden, Gustav III, was so taken by the scenery of the Syrjänkorkee ridge that he believed it to have been the very place where Satan tempted Jesus and promised him all the wonders of the world.

Syrjänkorkee also made an impression on the Russian tsar and Grand Duke of Finland, Alexander I, in 1819.

The largest and highest of these is Kirkkoharju, also called Helaamäki, which stretches from Vatiala to the church of Kangasala.

Topelius became fond of the views from the "Harjula ridge" and wrote his famous poem "A Summer's Day in Kangasala".

[8][citation needed] These landscapes were a source for an arising sense of nationality and arts that were means of concretizing the admiration and pride directed at them.

In particular, the early 19th-century art of painting, with its idyllic portraits of country and nature, expresses the intellectual world of Romanticism.

The earliest portrayers of the local landscape include Emanuel Thelning, a Swede sent to Kangasala by baron Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, after he himself had visited the healing spring of Kuohu in 1811, and the German Carl von Kügelgen, royal painter of Alexander I, who painted at least three paintings representing Kangasala.

His workpiece Vues pittoresques de la Finlande, which includes 15 lithographs, is often considered the start of Finnish landscape painting.

The increased popularity of landscape photography decreased artists' interest in the province of Tavastia (Häme).

Although the ridgetops were relatively treeless at that time – because of the sawmill industry's great demand for wood – the construction of observation towers was considered necessary to provide new viewpoints.

The ideological conceptions created by the artist had a great influence on the Finnish sense of nationality, as had picture postcards and the lake views from the observation towers.