Finland Proper

Finland has two great medieval buildings and both are in this city, at either end of its river. The castle, begun in the thirteenth century near the river mouth, is one of the largest surviving medieval structures in the Nordic countries — a grey stone bulk that grew through six centuries of extension, siege, fire and use as a granary and a prison, and is now a museum you can spend half a day inside, moving between rough medieval halls and later Renaissance rooms. The cathedral, at the other end, is the mother church of the country and its national shrine, its interior lined with the tombs and memorials of people who shaped Finland. Neither is decorative; both are the physical evidence of a period when this city, not Helsinki, was the point around which the country turned.

Turku's shape still follows the Aura, and the most enjoyable thing to do here is walk or cycle its banks end to end, which takes an hour and passes most of what matters. In summer the river becomes the social life of the city: a line of old boats permanently moored along the quays operate as bars, cafés and restaurants, and the riverside fills in a way that feels more southern European than Nordic. The city also carries the particular character of a place that used to be the capital and stopped being one in the early nineteenth century — it kept the cathedral, the castle, the oldest university traditions and a strong Swedish-speaking institutional life, but it lost the ministries and the growth, so what remains is a small, confident, slightly academic city rather than a grand one.

A short distance west of Turku, Naantali is a small harbour town with a preserved core of wooden houses, a medieval convent church and a summer population that multiplies its winter one several times over. It is also the location of the Moomin theme park, built on its own island and aimed squarely at younger children rather than thrill-seekers — which, combined with the region's mild weather, short distances and gentle landscape, makes this corner of Finland the country's most straightforward destination for families with small children. The Moomin connection also runs elsewhere in Finland in a different form, as a museum rather than a park, and the two are worth distinguishing before promising anything to a five-year-old.

West and south of Turku the coast dissolves into the beginnings of the Archipelago Sea, and the city is the practical mainland gateway to it — the signed island route that runs out through the archipelago on public ferries starts from this region, and belongs to the archipelago and Åland guide. Closer in, the coastal strip is a landscape of small harbours, summer houses and oak woodland, the last being genuinely unusual in Finland: this is the mildest corner of the country, far enough south and coastal enough to grow broadleaf forest, and there is an island of it on Turku's doorstep laid out with nineteenth-century wooden villas and walking paths. The result is a region that feels softer and older than most of Finland, and that opens a season earlier and closes it later.