Every design for Turku

On the bank of the River Aura stands Turun tuomiokirkko, a cathedral nearly eight hundred years old and still the country's national shrine, with the islands of the Archipelago Sea waiting just downstream. Turku grew up right here, at the river mouth on Finland's south-western coast, and it is still the oldest city in the country.

The position explains almost everything about the place. The river made it a trading town, and its very name comes from an old word for a market. The sea made it Finland's gateway to the west: frequent ferries leave the port for Mariehamn and Stockholm, and for centuries it was the most important city in the land, briefly the capital of the Grand Duchy. Luostarinmäki and Suomen Joutsen are museums every Turku family knows, and Maarian kirkko stands in Maaria, a municipality joined to the city in the twentieth century.

Follow the River Aura on the map from the cathedral to the sea, and you are tracing a walk most Turku families know by heart.