Turku Finland
11
Cruises availables
At departure or passage at this port
Azamara Club Cruises (4 Cruises)
Frequently Asked Questions
Near the mouth of the Aura, about 3 kilometres from the centre. A flat and pleasant riverside walk, or a few minutes by bus, brings you into the heart of the city.
The logical first stop of the call, a short walk from the terminals: a castle begun in the 1280s on what was then an island. Behind granite walls several metres thick lie Renaissance halls, chapels and dungeons. Allow a good hour and a half.
Seven centuries of Swedish and then Russian history: the banquets of Duke John and Catherine Jagiellon as much as the sieges and the fires.
Turku's maritime museum, about a kilometre from the quays along the riverside walk. It has a three-masted training ship and warships moored alongside.
Yes, it is one of the most agreeable urban introductions on the Baltic: about 3 kilometres at the water's edge, past converted warehouses, old ropewalks, terraces, benches turned to the river and restaurant boats moored side by side.
A small free ferry that has shuttled from one bank of the Aura to the other for more than a century, in summer. The crossing takes seconds and nobody wants to miss it.
It is Finland's national shrine. Consecrated around 1300 and rebuilt after the great fire of 1827 that destroyed almost the entire city, it holds the tombs of queens and military heroes, and its noon chimes are broadcast daily on Finnish radio.
An entire quarter of eighteenth-century wooden workshops and houses that escaped the flames of 1827, on a hill near the cathedral. Now an open-air handicrafts museum, it brings watchmakers, bookbinders and weavers back to life in their original interiors.
For the way back, yes, if you have gone up to the cathedral and Luostarinmäki: they are 3.5 to 4 kilometres from the quays. The castle and Forum Marinum are walkable straight from the ship.
At the market hall on Eerikinkatu, in business since 1896: smoked salmon, rye breads, Karelian pasties and cardamom buns, bought at the counter among period woodwork. In summer the neighbouring market square overflows with strawberries and fresh peas.
