Discover Turku

About Turku

Turku is Finland's oldest city and former capital — founded around 1229 at the mouth of the Aura river, where the Baltic Sea breaks into the spectacular archipelago of 20,000 islands that's now one of the country's most scenic playgrounds. The medieval Turku Castle, built around 1280 and one of the largest surviving fortresses in Northern Europe, anchors the harbour-front and is a museum showing how rough royal life actually was here in the 1500s. Across town, the imposing Turku Cathedral — the spiritual head of the Lutheran Church of Finland — is the national shrine and the place where Swedish kings of Finland were once consecrated; its bell still rings the country's official Christmas Peace ceremony at noon on 24 December, broadcast nationally since 1935. The Aura riverbanks have been gorgeously rehabilitated, with restaurant ships, the floating S/S Bore, and the Funicular and pedestrian bridges. Hop a public ferry to the green island of Ruissalo (botanical gardens, beach, August's massive Ruisrock festival), or take the longer connecting ferries out into the Archipelago Trail. The Aboa Vetus Ars Nova museum cleverly combines a medieval excavation in its basement with a modern art gallery above.