Every design for Paimio

Paimio is best known for its sanatorium, designed by Alvar Aalto as a tuberculosis hospital and still part of Turku University Hospital today. Yet the town's story starts long before modern architecture. Its fields and slopes hold a wealth of Bronze Age and Iron Age remains, and a bronze axe found here made national news and now rests in the Paimion kotiseutumuseo. In the Middle Ages the land was shared out among manors such as the Spurilan kartano, and the coat of arms still borrows from the arms of the Pora family who held sway here.

The town lies halfway between Turku and Salo in Southwest Finland. Through it runs the Paimionjoki, the largest of the rivers that flow into the Archipelago Sea, ending in Paimionlahti, a long, narrow bay where birds rest on their migrations. North of the centre, the river valley is one of the oldest farmed landscapes in Finland, and at Askalankoski a hydroelectric plant has turned the current into power for generations.

Electricity became one of Paimio's great industries, a story told at the Paimion Sähkömuseo ja matkailuneuvonta. Pair it with the old walls of the Spurilan kartano and you have a town where every era left something on the map, which is exactly why it looks good on a shirt.