Geography
The Turku Region is located in the southwestern corner of Finland around the city of Turku. It is part of the region Finland Proper and Western Finland. It shares borders with the sub-region of Salo in east, the subregion of Loimaa in northeast, Vakka-Suomi in north and Åboland in southwest. The Turku Region has part of the Archipelago Sea southwest along with its several islands.
The city region of Turku is formated by four major cities. Turku in the middle, Naantali and Raisio in west and Kaarina east. Coastline is occupied by two seaports one of Naantali and one of Turku. All four cities are connected with the Turku Ring Road and Kaarinantie. It has connections to E18, E63 highways, national roads 1, 8, 9 and 10. Turku Airport is located north side of the city center and ohikulkutie and its area is partly shared between Rusko and Turku. To north-east from Airport is where the city region ends and inner Finland with forest and countryside begins.
Because big part of the region is on the Archipelago Sea, there are several islands in the area and some of the municipalities are completely on them, such as Rymättylä for example. In the city region of Turku are some of the most notable islands of the Archipelago Sea like Luonnonmaa in Naantali, Hirvensalo, Kakskerta and Ruissalo in Turku, and Kuusisto in Kaarina. Islands are not so populated excluding Hirvensalo in Turku which is really near the center. Most of them are covered by woods but near the mainland there are field areas.
Most of the waters in the Turku Region are concentrated in the Archipelago Sea, but there are also few lakes and reservoirs which of some are on the islands. The sea is at most part narrow straits between islands. At most part the waters are quite shallow but major sea routes can be used even by the biggest ship cruisers in the world which some are made in shipyard in Turku.
Mainland is full of small hills, valleys and river valleys. Hills are often rocky as like the islands of archipelago and actually those hills used to be part of the archipelago short after the ice age, but they grew up from the sea and got connected to the mainland. Some of the hills used to serve as guardian towers on the age of vikings, who used to rob villages on the Baltic Sea. When guards spotted the vikings they set up an alarm fire on the top of the hill that other guardian hills on the row would see it and make their own fire. One of such hills is Vartiovuori in Turku, which actually means "Guardian Mountain". The river valleys have always been places of settlement, safe from the open sea yet close and connected to it. When valleys aren't populated they are usually occupied by grain fields.
Read more about this topic: Turku Sub-region
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