But two events in early 19th century changed the history forever for Turku. First in 1809 the peace treaty of Hamina, where sweden lost cotnroll of Finland. Finland became semi intepended nation with the russian Tsar as the head of state. The Tsar felt the Turku was much too close to Sweden and therefor Helsinki became the capitol of country. Finland was independed enough to form own parlament during the 1850.s and there was a customs between Finland and Russia. The second event was a devastating fire in in 19th century in which most of the city was burned down.
The 19th century was when the industrial revolution took place in Europe, and at Littoinen, just east of Turku, the first steam powered plant which started its operation, and within few years Turku was heavily industrialized. Noteworthy is ship buildings where the docks dominted the rather cramped shores of Aura river which still devides the city. Today much of the shipyards have been relocated to a new site some 10 kilometers west of the city, or dismanteled. But in the remains there is a shipping museum rising up telling the history of important shipping was for the city. Still Turku is a major port for tourist who visit Finland.
Finland became an independed nation in 1917, and suffered from a bloody civil war during its first years and suffered from two wars against the sovjets during WWII. These did leave a mark in Turku as the city was heavily bombed by the russian air force. The post war modern architecture has set its mark on Turku. Unfortunally not only replacing destructed buildings but as a sign of the sprit of building a new and better world, some interesting older buildings are gone forever and new blocks of concrete and glass towers the older and usually one story hight russian styled houses.
Tuirku is still a very nice to visit in the summer, and one of the jewels is the park of Samppalinna, which towers over the city in south. The park houses a summer theatre, sports arenas for track and field over a fairly large area. Turku is very orianted in sports and the home team TPS is one the leading teams in hockey and football. For the hockey and other events a tadium housing 14 000 seats was constucted in the last decade of 20th century.
Today Turku is populated by more than 175 000 people and is the third largest city in the nation, after Helsinki and Tampere and the universities, there is two of them are highly respected educational institutions. One of them is the Swedish academy, where the educarion is carried out in Swedish and the Turku University is running its educations in finnish.