Finland · Varsinais-Suomi · Turku
Iso-Heikkilä, Turku — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Iso-Heikkilä is a district west of central Turku, Finland, known in Swedish as Storheikkilä and holding the city's observatory on its hill.
About Iso-Heikkilä
Where to stay in Iso-Heikkilä
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Iso-Heikkilä has been industrial ground for most of its life, and the residential part is concentrated in Patterinhaka, Turku's first suburb of its kind. Its apartment blocks stand along Latokartanonkatu and Kanslerintie with a day nursery and a home for the elderly among them. The district is changing again.
A new residential quarter called Kirstinpuisto is going up on the old industrial land at the eastern end.
About Iso-Heikkilä
What are the main landmarks in Iso-Heikkilä?
The Iso-Heikkilä observatory stands at the top of the hill, and the district's street names draw partly on astronomy because of it. Aarne Ehojoki laid out the housing beside it. Patterinhaka below is the older landmark in its way, built in 1954 as the first residential suburb Turku had, designed by Ehojoki with Veijo Kahra and raised by Puolimatka with sliding formwork on site.
What is the history of Iso-Heikkilä?
Iso-Heikkilä was a village of the Maaria municipality until 1944, when Turku took it in. The manor that gave the place its name went back to the fifteenth century, and between 1924 and 1956 the University of Turku kept its botanical garden on the same ground. Both are gone now.
Puolimatka's apartment blocks replaced them from 1954, and a wastewater treatment plant worked in Patterinhaka from 1966 until the Kakola works took over in 2009.
Where is Iso-Heikkilä?
Iso-Heikkilä lies west of the centre of Turku and belongs to the central major district, bounded north by the Uusikaupunki railway, west by the harbour line curving south from it, and south by Tukholmankatu and Pansiontie. Port Arthur adjoins it to the east. The old village stretched further, south-west towards what is now the Länsisatama and north-east as far as the Naantali expressway.
More areas in Turku
Updated September 2026