Unfortunately we spent only a few hours in the middle aged city of Turku but managed to visit one of the oldest churches in Finland which is the main cathedral of Turku now.

The Cathedral

Inside it’s huge, cold and dark. When you come inside you can imagine how all the people of the medieval city would hide here as in the fortress when the city was besieged by the enemy. Only several places inside of the cathedral are lit up – tombs of the royal family members and aristocrats of the city which is a quite an interesting but gloomy view.

The Cathedral

The city made a magic impression on us. When we arrived to the city by tourist bus it was quite dark already but all the places we saw were illuminated with the festive lights. That night Turku reminded us of the thousands small islands scattered in the Gulf of Finland (you can see them from the ferry when you sail from Turku to Stockholm): first you don’t see anything except of a small dot of light but the closer you come you can discern some outlines of the object and then in a minute to see whether a building, all covered with thing filaments of electric lights, or a snowy hill, decorated for Christmas, or an entrance to a nice cozy home with its windows light up with the bright flame of the fireplace. That night our trip ended at the bottom part of the gigantic massive "home on the water" or "water skyscraper" — ferry-shipped at the harbor and also all illuminated and ready to welcome us!