Turku

Turku grew up where the Aura meets the sea, in the most densely settled corner of Iron Age Finland; the name Finland first meant only this district. In 1229 the bishop's seat moved to Koroinen, near the present centre. Pope Gregory IX mentioned the town of Aboa in a bull of 1229, which is now taken as its founding year. The cathedral was consecrated in 1300 and the castle at the river mouth was founded in the 1280s, and from them Swedish kings, bishops and governors ran Finland. German merchants with Hanseatic ties shaped the early town, and Mikael Agricola, the father of written Finnish, worked here as headmaster of the cathedral school and then bishop.

In 1640 Queen Christina founded the Royal Academy of Turku, Finland's first university. After Russia took Finland in 1809 Turku became capital of the new Grand Duchy, but in 1812 Alexander I moved the capital to Helsinki. The Great Fire of 1827, the largest urban fire in Nordic history, destroyed about three quarters of the city, and the academy and the remaining government offices left for Helsinki. Carl Ludvig Engel drew up a new and safer city plan, and Turku stayed Finland's largest city until the late 1840s.

After independence two universities restored its standing: Åbo Akademi, in Swedish, in 1918, and the Finnish University of Turku in 1920. In the 1960s Turku became the first Western city to twin with Leningrad. Its shipyard, today Meyer Turku, builds cruise ships and cruise ferries, and in 2011 Turku shared the title of European Capital of Culture with Tallinn.

Turku people are well aware that their city is the oldest in Finland and was its first capital. The cathedral is the mother church of Finnish Lutheranism and the seat of the archbishop, and since 1996 Turku has been the official Christmas City of Finland: at noon on Christmas Eve the Declaration of Christmas Peace, a tradition going back to the Middle Ages, is read from the Old Great Square and broadcast nationwide. The square also holds the Medieval Market each summer.

The city is bilingual. About 5 per cent of residents speak Swedish as their first language, and Åbo Akademi and Åbo Svenska Teater keep Swedish-language life strong. Music runs from the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, based in the first concert hall in Finland, to Ruisrock on Ruissalo, the country's oldest rock festival. The City Theatre leads half a dozen theatres, and summer theatres such as Samppalinna add to the season.

Sport means football — TPS and FC Inter both play in the top league — ice hockey with HC TPS, winners of 11 national titles, and athletics, honouring the Turku-born runner Paavo Nurmi with the Paavo Nurmi Games and a marathon. The old rivalry with Tampere is kept up with good humour: since 1997, students from Tampere have come each year to leap on Turku's market square.

About 210,000 people live in the city and around 320,000 in the metropolitan area, making it the third-largest urban area in Finland after Helsinki and Tampere. About 17 per cent of residents had a foreign background in 2024, almost twice the national average, and other languages are now spoken at home more widely than Swedish.

The economy turns on the port and services. Over three million passengers a year travel through the harbour to Stockholm and Mariehamn, the shipyard builds cruise ships, and the universities, the university hospital and biotech firms employ many people. The University of Turku had about 22,300 students in 2022, and with Turku University of Applied Sciences and Åbo Akademi they give the city a young population and plenty of cafés, clubs and live music.

Most residents live in flats in the centre or in post-war suburbs; Varissuo and Runosmäki are the largest districts, and unemployment is high in parts of the east. The southern islands, Ruissalo, Hirvensalo and Kakskerta, hold summer houses, though parts of Hirvensalo are growing into suburbs. Life moves to the river in summer, to boats and cottages at weekends, and in winter to ski tracks and skating rinks when the snow and ice allow.

Turku has been officially declared the Food Capital of Finland, home to some of the country's oldest restaurants. Fish, above all Baltic herring, is traditional in the region's cooking, and the riverside markets keep that alive: an Archipelago Market in April and a Herring Market in October bring fish delicacies and handicrafts to the Aura. The local speciality to look for is raisin sausage, sold in the Market Hall, the second-oldest in Finland, open since 1896 and still full of fish, meat, cheese and bakery stalls.

The city has given its name to Turun sinappi, a dark yellow, finely ground mustard first made by a Turku food company in 1948 and often served with makkara, sausage; a local firm now makes Auran sinappi, named after the river, to the same recipe. Hesburger, in 2008 the largest hamburger chain in Finland, opened its first restaurant in Turku in 1980 and is still based here.

Everyday eating follows the Finnish pattern of a hot lunch, often a set menu, and a lighter evening meal. The best-regarded restaurants and wine bars cluster on the riverbanks downstream from the cathedral, student restaurants and kebab and pizza places fill the streets near the station and the square, and summer brings terrace drinking on the riverside and on the boats moored along it.