Finland · Varsinais-Suomi · Turku
Itäharju, Turku — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Itäharju, Österås in Swedish, is the Turku district east of Kupittaa, mixing detached houses with an industrial quarter marked by the three-tower If-talo.
About Itäharju
Where to stay in Itäharju
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Rooms here are thin, and the district's one recorded lodging is Majatalo 22, which took over the 1934 parish hall at Vanha Littoistentie 22 in 2011. Kupittaa station lies about a kilometre west. It sits in the neighbouring Kupittaa district rather than this one, but every Helsinki-to-Turku train calls there, which makes Itäharju an easy base for anyone whose business is the Turku Science Park offices or an appointment at the Turku University Hospital.
Buses between the Turku centre and Varissuo run through the district all day.
About Itäharju
What are the main landmarks in Itäharju?
The district's showpieces are industrial rather than ecclesiastical. Old Mill, the 1920 factory building Frithiof Strandell drew for the Turun Porsliinitehdas to make ceramic electrical insulators, now houses information and communications firms under that English name, and the three office towers of the If-talo read as the district's tallest thing from any direction. Kupittaan Savi went bankrupt in 1969.
Its brick and ceramics works stood in northwestern Itäharju, and the T-sairaala of the Turku University Hospital was raised on that ground. Retail arrived by conversion: the Prisma hypermarket occupies a former fan factory hall, with a Lidl nearby on the industrial estate.
What is the history of Itäharju?
Itäharju's oldest recorded mark is a burial ground: the cholera epidemic of 1831 put a cholera cemetery on this ground outside the then-built city. War left a second mark, an anti-aircraft battery on the hill of Mikkolanmäki during the Second World War. Autokori arrived in 1951.
The bus-body works stayed until the firm moved to Lieto in 1973, and between 1955 and 1965 the district's own streets were closed on an August or September Sunday for the Itäharjun ajot, a car and motorcycle meeting run over a circuit of Kalevankatu, Peronkatu, Voimakatu, Karjakatu and Teollisuuskatu. Jarno Saarinen and Rauno Aaltonen both raced it, and about five thousand people watched the 1964 running before the event moved to Artukainen in 1966. Housing followed, with Veijo Kahra's Jaani estate of apartment blocks going up in the early 1970s.
Where is Itäharju?
Itäharju lies between three Turku districts: Kupittaa to the west, Nummi to the north and Pääskyvuori to the south-east, with Varissuo further out along the same eastern corridor. Helsingintie runs along its western edge. Turku plans a concrete deck over that road and the railway beside it to stitch the district onto Kupittaa, and a masterplan carries the Turku Science Park east into the Itäharju industrial estate, with more than twenty thousand new homes and ten thousand new jobs projected by 2050.
More areas in Turku
Updated September 2026