Finland · Varsinais-Suomi · Turku
Raunistula, Turku — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Raunistula is a district north of central Turku, Finland, which grew into the city's largest suburb in the 1880s and is now mostly houses.
About Raunistula
Where to stay in Raunistula
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Detached and terraced houses make up most of Raunistula, and what industrial land remains is being turned over to housing as well. It is a quiet address close to the centre. The district straddles two of Turku's major divisions, belonging partly to Runosmäki-Raunistula and partly to Länsikeskus, which is a legacy of how it grew outward rather than to any plan.
About Raunistula
What are the main landmarks in Raunistula?
For most of a century the landmark here was Hankkija's Raunistula feed mill, put up in 1910 and pulled down in 2010. Nothing has replaced it in that role. The older marks are buried rather than built: a burial ground from the eleventh or twelfth century was found at Virusmäki, the village tied to Raunistula, and the medieval farms of Lonttinen, Konsa, and Väitti stood on this ground.
What is the history of Raunistula?
Virusmäki appears in documents in 1359 and again in 1363, and three farms stood at Raunistula through the middle ages, Lonttinen and Konsa, each later split in two at the Great Partition, and Väitti, crown land recorded in the seventeenth century as the official estate of a professor of the Turku Academy. It stayed rural for centuries. Craftsmen burned out of the city by the Turku fire of 1827 rebuilt here, and after the Turku to Toijala railway opened in 1876 the asphalt works and two chemical factories followed, which turned Raunistula into the largest suburb Turku had by the 1880s.
Where is Raunistula?
Raunistula lies north of the centre of Turku, on ground that belonged to the Maaria municipality before the city took it. The railway to Toijala runs through it. That line is why the small factories settled along it in the first place, and the district's shape still follows the old village boundaries more than any later street grid.
More areas in Turku
Updated September 2026