Where to stay in Kimito
The right area depends on your trip. Here's who each one suits — pick the place, then the hotel.
Kimito keeps a small stock of beds, the kind of island parish of Varsinais-Suomi where a guesthouse, a farm room or a rented cottage by the water is the usual bed rather than a large hotel. The village centre gathers around the Kemiön kirkko, and a room near it puts the church, the open-air museum of Sagalund and the day-to-day of the parish within an easy walk. It is the simplest base.
From the centre it is a short way out to the shores and channels that ring Kimitoön in the Archipelago Sea. Out across the island, cottages and holiday cabins stand along the rocky shores and near the Strömman kanava, a quiet base for boating, fishing and the slow archipelago summer of south-western Finland. Stock is thin everywhere.
Visitors drawn by the museum farm of Sagalund or the sea canal often stay close to the Kemiön kirkko, while many travellers instead sleep in the larger town of Salo on the mainland and drive across the bridges to Kimito for the day. Book ahead in summer, when the few cottages on Kimitoön fill early.
About Kimito
What is Kimito known for?
Kimito is known as an old Swedish-speaking island parish on Kimitoön, in the Archipelago Sea of south-western Finland. The Kemiön kirkko marks its centre. Sea and stone shape it.
The open-air museum of Sagalund gathers the buildings of the island past, the Strömman kanava cuts a sea route through the rock, and the parish keeps a maritime, agrarian character set apart from the mainland of Varsinais-Suomi by the channels of the archipelago.
What are the main landmarks in Kimito?
The Kemiön kirkko is the landmark of the parish, the old island church that holds the centre of Kimito on Kimitoön. Three more mark the island. The open-air museum of Sagalund gathers the buildings and life of the archipelago past, the stone Karunan kirkko stands among the parishes of this corner of Varsinais-Suomi, and the Strömman kanava cuts a sea route through the rock, together giving the island of south-western Finland a quartet of church, museum and canal set among the channels of the Archipelago Sea.
What is the history of Kimito?
Kimito is an old island parish. Its roots run deep into the Swedish-speaking archipelago of south-western Finland, where farmers and seafarers settled the rocky ground of Kimitoön and the Kemiön kirkko rose to gather them into one of the oldest parishes of Varsinais-Suomi. The sea ran through everything.
Boats carried goods and people between the islands and the mainland, and the stone Karunan kirkko marked the faith of the surrounding parishes across this corner of the Archipelago Sea. For centuries Kimito lived by farming, fishing and the sea. The cutting of the Strömman kanava opened a safer route through the channels and tied the island into the wider archipelago trade, while manor farms and villages spread across the land of Kimitoön.
In later generations the buildings and crafts of that island life were gathered into the open-air museum of Sagalund, so the parish around the Kemiön kirkko keeps both a living Swedish-speaking community and a museum memory of the old archipelago world of Varsinais-Suomi.
Where is Kimito?
Kimito spreads across the island of Kimitoön in the Archipelago Sea, off the mainland of Varsinais-Suomi in south-western Finland. Rock and water shape the land, a country of low wooded ridges, farm fields and a deeply broken shore laced with bays, sounds and skerries. Channels cut everywhere.
The Strömman kanava threads a sea route through the rock at one edge, the village centre gathers by the Kemiön kirkko, and bridges link the island parish across the channels to the mainland of south-western Finland.
What is the climate of Kimito?
Kimito has the mild maritime climate of the Archipelago Sea, the surrounding water tempering the seasons across Kimitoön more than on the inland of Varsinais-Suomi. The sea softens the cold. Winters run cold but less harsh than inland, the channels around the Kemiön kirkko icing over in the hardest spells, while the long summer light draws boats out among the skerries.
Sea fog and wind mark the shoulder seasons over the rocky shores of this island corner of south-western Finland.
How do you get to Kimito?
Kimito is reached by road across the bridges that link Kimitoön to the mainland of Varsinais-Suomi. Most visitors drive. The roads run out from the larger town of Salo and from the wider region, crossing the channels of the Archipelago Sea onto the island and on to the Kemiön kirkko at its centre.
Buses serve the route. From Salo the rail line and the wider Finnish road network reach the rest of south-western Finland, while a car is the simplest way to wander the shores of Kimito.
Where Kimito sits
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