From Helsinki: Turku Castle & Cathedral – Finland's Medieval Capital

Head west from Helsinki along the Finnish south coast toward Turku. The guide introduces the history of Finland under Swedish rule (1249–1809) — the period during which Turku served as Finland's capital, its castle as the seat of royal governors, and its cathedral as the headquarters of the Finnish church. The guide covers the unique position of Finland in Scandinavian history: a country that was simultaneously the easternmost province of the Swedish Empire and the westernmost target of Russian expansion, meaning Turku Castle was always both a royal residence and a frontier fortress.

Turku Castle was begun in 1280 by Swedish crusaders who had conquered Finland during the Northern Crusades — the same campaign that built the Livonian Order castles of Latvia and Estonia. The original grey-granite keep was expanded through the 14th and 15th centuries into a complex of towers and halls, then transformed in the 1560s by Duke John of Finland (later King John III of Sweden) into a Renaissance palace with extraordinary vaulted halls, painted ceilings, and the most lavish interiors in medieval Finland. Duke John used the castle as his court while governing Finland as his personal duchy — and it was here that his wife Catherine Jagiellon (of the Polish-Lithuanian Jagiellonian dynasty) was imprisoned with him from 1563 to 1567, after John's brother King Eric XIV declared them traitors. Their son, born in captivity in the castle, became Sigismund III Vasa — simultaneously King of Poland and King of Sweden. The castle museum covers 750 years of Finnish history through the archaeology of the castle.

Turku Cathedral is the national church of Finland — the mother church of the Lutheran Church of Finland and the burial place of Finland's medieval bishops, Swedish royalty who died in Finland, and the nobles who shaped the country's history. The cathedral was begun in the 1280s in a Gothic style and has been repeatedly expanded, damaged by fire, and rebuilt. The Chapel of St Henry (Finland's patron saint, an English bishop who came to Finland with a Swedish crusade in 1155 and was murdered by a Finnish peasant he had just converted) contains the chapel's medieval frescoes — the oldest painted images in Finland. The guide covers the extraordinary story of the Reformation in Finland, when Bishop Mikael Agricola translated the New Testament into Finnish in 1548 — creating written Finnish for the first time.