Nunnapolun rappuset

Good to know

• Historical landmark
• Open 24 hoursEvery day
• 8 kmfrom Turku center
• 3.7 / 53 reviews
• Turku

A remnant of a medieval pilgrim road

Saint Henry's Way was born in the Middle Ages, when older local tracks were stitched into a single pilgrimage network connecting the sites associated with Bishop Henry — his reputed death place on the ice of Lake Köyliönjarvi, his burial church at Nousiainen, and finally the cathedral in Turku. The stretch between Turku and Nousiainen has long been called the Nunnapolku, and it ran from the cathedral via Koroisniemi and **Maaria church**, then on past Rusko toward Masku's famous Nunnalähde ('Nunna spring') and Nousiainen.↗↗

For centuries the route slipped beneath new roads and building as Turku's outskirts grew, so very little of the original line is now visible. Yet in the low-lying ground the path had been paved with stone slabs, and short fragments of the old road — stepped, slabbbed and weathered — still turn up in the fields and lane edges around Räntämäki, Kärsämäki and near Turku airport. The Nunnapolun rappuset belong to this family of surviving glimpses, kept alive by the path's place in the national cultural-environment register, where the Nunnapolku is recorded as a medieval road bed protected under the Antiquities Act.↗↗↗

Even the name carries a story. Historians have suggested that 'Nunnapolku' goes back to the Catholic era, when nuns were among those who travelled it; in later folk memory, when the recollection of monastic orders faded in Lutheran times, a 'nunta' came to mean a giant-like being of legend. Whatever its origin, the road is documented with certainty only from maps of the 1700s, including the great Kuninkaan kartasto royal atlas.↗↗

What to notice on the spot

Expect a low-key, free-standing historical landmark set in open rural landscape rather than a developed attraction. The interest is in standing on a lane that follows the old pilgrim alignment, looking at the worn stone steps that give the site its name, and taking in the same low fields, tree lines and distant horizon that travellers crossed on foot and on horseback for hundreds of years. It is a place for quiet reflection and a photograph, best appreciated if you already know the story behind it.↗↗↗

The steps are a marker and a starting point rather than a destination in themselves. The great appeal for the curious is to treat them as one thread in a living trail: the wider Saint Henry's Way is signposted across the region with its own emblem, so this corner of Maaria is one tangible piece of a much longer journey that links village churches, springs, ridge paths and the cathedral itself.↗↗

Making the visit worth it

The site is easy to appreciate as part of a walk or bike ride in Turku's northern countryside. The landmark is open at all hours and free to see, sitting along a quiet road where the old route's atmosphere is best felt away from the city centre. Because the surrounding path fragments are subtle, give yourself a little time to look along the lane and the field edges rather than only at the marker itself.↗↗

If you want to make a fuller day of it, pair the visit with the broader Saint Henry's heritage story: the pilgrimage route threads through sites around Turku and onward toward Nousiainen and Lake Köyliönjarvi, and Turku Cathedral — the route's southern anchor and a major medieval church in its own right — makes a natural conclusion to any day spent tracing the old pilgrim road.↗↗