Great Fire of Turku

The Great Fire of Turku (Finnish: Turun palo and Swedish: Åbo brand) was a conflagration that is still the largest urban fire in the history of Finland and the Nordic countries. The fires started burning on 4 September 1827 in burgher Carl Gustav Hellman’s house on the Aninkaistenmäki hill slightly before 9 p.m. The fire quickly swept through the northern quarter, spread to the southern quarter and jumped the Aura River, setting the Cathedral Quarter on fire before midnight. By the next day, the fire had destroyed 75% of the city. Only 25% of the city was spared, mainly the western and southern portions.

The fire destroyed the historical downtown area of Turku, including Turku Cathedral and the main building of the Imperial Academy of Turku, Akatemiatalo, which were badly damaged. The disaster was made possible by a dry summer preceding the event, a fire-spreading storm rising on the night of the fire, and a lack of extinguishers because a large number of the city's people happened to be visiting a market in Tampere that day. The damage was considerable and was felt for a long period of time in the aftermath of the event. 11,000 people were left homeless, and 27 casualties and hundreds of wounded were recorded.

The night of the fire, Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander, Observator at the Imperial Academy of Turku, was in the Vartiovuori Observatory on Vartiovuorenmäki. Due to the fire, he had to stop what he was doing. In his observation log, he wrote: "Today observation was interrupted by a horrible fire that reduced Turku to ashes”. The observatory, placed on the top of a tall hill, was spared though and work was continued on 9 September. As the rest of the academy has suffered great damage, its indispensable activities such as meetings of the and the Chancellor’s Office, were moved to the observatory. Most Finnish archives, including practically all material from the Middle ages, was destroyed in the fire.

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