Järvenpää (; , ; ) is a town in Finland, located in the southern interior of the country. Järvenpää is situated in the centre of the Uusimaa region in the immediate vicinity of Lake Tuusula. The population of Järvenpää is approximately . It is the most populous municipality in Finland. Järvenpää is part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, which has approximately million inhabitants.
Järvenpää is located on the Helsinki-Riihimäki railway line in the Uusimaa region, about north of Helsinki. Neighbouring municipalities are Tuusula, Sipoo and Mäntsälä. People also refer to Kerava as Järvenpää's neighbour, although technically they do not share a border due to the one kilometre-wide strip of land that belongs to Tuusula.
History
The first documented mention of the village of Järvenpää is found in a tax list from 1540, where it is named in Swedish as ; starting from the next decade, its Finnish name was used in parallel, in forms such as Jerffuepä or Järuenpää. Around this time, the village was documented to consist of eight estates. Prior to being transferred to the newly formed chapel of Tuusula in 1643, Järvenpää was part of the parish of Sipoo; Tuusula, in turn, became an independent pastorate () in 1654.
While the population in Järvenpää had long been stagnant, it had started expanding again by the late 1700s, thanks to the evolution of agriculture at the time. In the middle of the 1800s, Järvenpää together with Nummenkylä formed the most populous village of Tuusula with around 450 inhabitants. Thanks to its location on the road between Helsinki and Mäntsälä, the village had grown into a minor concentration of commerce, with the presence of a - a type of tavern - and several craftsmen. Thanks to these factors, one of the original intermediate stations of the Helsinki–Riihimäki railway was placed in Järvenpää. In 2019, out of the total population of 43,711, the entire urban population of Järvenpää was localized in a single urban area. Only 42 people lived in sparsely populated areas, while the coordinates of 729 people were unknown. This made Järvenpää's degree of urbanization 99.9%.