🇫🇮 Finland · South and coast
Naantali is one of those towns that look like they came out of a storybook, and with good reason: Finland's best loved character lives here. This small coastal town in the southwest, a step away from Turku, is famous across the country for its old quarter of little wooden houses, its pretty marina full of sailing boats and, above all, for Moomin World (Muumimaailma), the theme park devoted to the Moomins, the endearing characters created by the Finnish writer Tove Jansson.
But Naantali is much more than the Moomins. It is a summer destination with centuries of history, born around a medieval convent, with one of the most charming wooden old towns in Finland, cobbled streets, craft shops, cafés by the sea and the relaxed feel of a seaside town. It is also home to Kultaranta, the official summer residence of the President of Finland, a detail that says a lot about the standing of the place.
Right on the edge of the largest archipelago in Europe, Naantali combines the charm of a pretty town, the magic of the Moomins for families and the beauty of the Finnish Baltic. This guide tells you what to see, how to get here from Turku, what Moomin World costs and how to make the most of the visit, planned above all for summer, when the town shines.
Naantali was born in the 15th century around an important convent of the Order of Saint Bridget, founded in 1443, which gave it its name ('Vallis Gratiae', the 'Valley of Grace', in Finnish Naantali and in Swedish Nådendal, 'valley of grace'). The monastery made the place a religious and pilgrimage centre, and the town grew in its shadow. After the Protestant Reformation the convent lost importance, but Naantali continued as a town of craftspeople and, later, as a fashionable bathing and holiday destination in the 19th century, when the Finnish bourgeoisie discovered its coast. Today it preserves its medieval convent church and its wooden quarter, and it has reinvented itself as the Finnish capital of the Moomins. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Baltic coastal strip where the country was born: the old capital Turku, modern Helsinki and the wooden towns of a bilingual, seafaring Finland.
Read the history of South and coast →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Naantali was born of faith. Unlike other Finnish towns, which grew up around castles or trading ports, Naantali came out of a monastery. In 1443, king Christopher of Bavaria, who reigned over the Kalmar Union (Sweden, Denmark and Norway), authorised the founding of a convent of the Order of Saint Bridget — the Bridgettines — at a spot on the southwest coast of Finland. The monastery took the Latin name 'Vallis Gratiae', the 'Valley of Grace', translated into Swedish as Nådendal and into Finnish as Naantali.
The Order of Saint Bridget, founded by the Swedish mystic Bridget of Sweden (Birgitta), was one of the most influential in northern Europe, and its Naantali convent soon became one of the most important religious centres in Finland. It was a double monastery, of nuns and monks, and a place of pilgrimage, study and manuscript copying. The great stone convent church, finished at the end of the 15th century, was raised on the hill as the heart of the complex.
A small settlement grew up around the convent to serve the needs of the monastery and of the pilgrims: craftspeople, merchants, innkeepers. That is how the town of Naantali was born, granted town rights tied to the convent. For almost a century, the life of the town revolved around the religious order that had given it its name and its reason to exist.
The world that had created Naantali collapsed with the Protestant Reformation. In the 1520s, king Gustav Vasa of Sweden broke with Rome, imposed Lutheranism across the realm — of which Finland was part — and confiscated the property of the Catholic Church. The monasteries were dissolved and their assets passed to the crown. The Naantali convent did not escape the process: it lost its income and its lands, and its religious community gradually died out.
The Bridgettine monastery of Naantali held out longer than others, partly because of its prestige and the resistance of its last nuns, but by the end of the 16th century monastic life had gone out entirely. The convent buildings fell into ruin or were reused, and in time almost all of them disappeared. Only the great stone church survived, becoming a Lutheran parish church, and it still stands today as the one great witness to the town's monastic past.
Without its convent, Naantali was reduced to a small coastal town of craftspeople and fishers, without the importance it once had. Through the following centuries it was a modest, rather forgotten place, known above all for making socks and knitwear, a traditional trade of its inhabitants. It would take until the 19th century for Naantali to find a new reason to prosper.
The 19th century gave Naantali a second life, very different from the first. At a time when 'sea bathing' and coastal health cures became fashionable among Europe's better-off classes, Naantali, with its quiet bay, its mild climate and its charm, turned into a spa town and an elegant summer destination. In 1863 a bathing establishment (spa) opened that drew the Finnish bourgeoisie and visitors from Saint Petersburg and other cities.
Through the summer, Naantali filled with holidaymakers who came to rest, bathe and enjoy the sea air. Wooden villas, hotels and gardens were built, and the town took on the pretty, bourgeois air of a summer resort that it largely keeps today. The old town of little wooden houses, with its rose bushes and cobbled streets, crystallised in that period into the charming setting that attracts visitors now.
Naantali's standing as a holiday place was cemented in the 20th century by a first-rate symbol: the choice of Kultaranta, on the island of Luonnonmaa facing the town, as the official summer residence of the President of the Republic of Finland. That palace with its famous rose gardens made little Naantali the head of state's summer retreat, an honour that reinforces its elegant image to this day.
Naantali's most recent and perhaps most surprising transformation came at the end of the 20th century, at the hands of some fictional characters. The Moomins (Muumit in Finnish, Mumintroll in Swedish) are white, good-natured creatures shaped like small hippos, created by the Swedish-speaking Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) from 1945 onwards, in a series of illustrated books and comics that became classics of children's literature.
The Moomin universe — tender, imaginative and with a melancholy, philosophical undercurrent — first won over Finland and the Nordic countries, and then the whole world, with extraordinary success in Japan thanks to the animated series. The Moomins became one of Finland's great cultural symbols and an internationally recognised brand.
In 1993, Moomin World (Muumimaailma) opened on the island of Kailo, next to Naantali harbour, a theme park devoted to these characters, with the approval and involvement of Tove Jansson herself and her family. Unlike conventional amusement parks, it was conceived as a place of atmosphere faithful to the spirit of the books, with no roller coasters, focused on imagination and on meeting the characters. The success was enormous and turned Naantali into the Finnish capital of the Moomins and one of the country's most popular family destinations. So the little town born of a medieval convent found in the 21st century a new and bright claim to fame, joining its summer-resort old quarter with the magic of Finland's best loved characters.
Contemporary Naantali leads a curious double life. On the one hand, it is one of the most picturesque and touristy towns in Finland, an elegant summer destination with its wooden old quarter, its yacht harbour, Moomin World and the presidential residence at Kultaranta. On the other, its municipality is home to one of the country's largest oil refineries, an important industrial and energy centre that provides work for the region and contrasts with the postcard image of the historic core. That mix of storybook seaside town and industrial infrastructure is part of the real Naantali.
Tourism, however, is the great engine of its identity. In the wake of Moomin World, opened in 1993, Naantali established itself as a first-rate family destination, with hotels, a large seafront spa complex (Naantali Spa) that is very popular with Finns, and an intense summer life of archipelago cruises, festivals and terraces by the water. In summer, the small town multiplies its population with visitors from all over Finland and abroad.
Naantali also keeps much loved traditions that tie it to its history. The most famous is 'Sleepyhead Day' (Unikeonpäivä), on 27 July: at dawn, a local figure chosen in secret is thrown into the harbour water amid music and celebration, in a festivity with medieval roots linked to the legend of the Seven Sleepers. The town also hosts a prestigious chamber music festival in summer. So the old convent town of the 'Valley of Grace' keeps its historic charm alive while reinventing itself, summer after summer, as one of the brightest and best loved corners of the Finnish coast.