for: Türkü
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for: Türkü
inote: Aluetietopankki Turku, in Swedish Åbo (pronounced , 1) is a city and the original capital of Finland on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura river( ). Turku is part of the Finland Proper region in the Province of Western Finland. It is believed that the city was settled in the late 13th century, making it the oldest city in Finland. Until the 1840s it was also the largest city in Finland. Fact: date=September 2008
Turku is the main city in its region as well as the cultural and economic centre of Western Finland. Turku is the capital of both the Finland Proper region and the Province of Western Finland. Of the central governmental bodies that used to operate in Turku at the time when Finland was under the rule of Sweden, only the seat of the Archbishop of Finland remains in the city today. Turku has been designated by the European Capital of Culture for the year 2011, together with Tallinn, Estonia.
As of 31 August 2008 Turku's population was 175 279, which makes it the fifth largest city in Finland by population. There were 303 492 inhabitants living in the Turku sub-region, which makes it the third largest urban area in Finland after the Greater Helsinki area and Tampere sub-region. The city is officially bilingual as 5.2 percent of its population identify as speaking Swedish as a mother-tongue. Due to its location, Turku is a notable commercial and passenger seaport city with around 3.7 million passengers travelling through its seaport each year.
History
Turku has a long history as Finland's largest city and administrative centre, but has, over the last two centuries, given up both titles to Helsinki. To this day, the city's identity stems from its status as the oldest city in Finland and the country's former capital. Originally, the word "Finland" referred only to the area around Turku (hence the title, "Finland Proper" for the region).
During the Middle Ages, Turku was the seat of the Bishop of Turku (a title later upgraded to Archbishop of Turku), covering the then eastern Sweden (most of the present-day Finland) until the 17th century. It was the only city in Finland to trade with the Hanseatic League. Even if Turku had no official capital status, both the Dukes and Governors-General of Finland usually had their Finnish residences there. In 1640, the first university in Finland, The Royal Academy of Turku, was founded in Turku. Turku was also the meeting place for the States of Finland in 1676.
After the Finnish War, which ended when Sweden ceded Finland to Imperial Russia at the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in 1809, Turku became briefly the official capital, but soon lost the status to Helsinki, as Emperor Alexander I felt that Turku was too far from Russia and too aligned with Sweden to serve as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Fact: date=June 2008 The change officially took place in 1812. The government offices that remained in Turku were finally moved to the new capital after the Great Fire of Turku, which almost completely destroyed the city in 1827. Fact: date=September 2008 After the fire, a new and safer city plan was drawn up by German architect Carl Ludvig Engel, who had also designed the new capital, Helsinki. Turku remained the largest city in Finland for another twenty years.
