Åbo

In the last wars of the Kalmar Union Danish fleets sacked the town in 1509 and again in 1522. The Reformation came through its cathedral school, whose master Mikael Agricola, later Bishop of Åbo, became the father of written Finnish, and from 1556 to 1563 Duke John, son of Gustav Vasa, kept a splendid court in the castle as Duke of Finland. The 17th century made Åbo the seat of Finland's government and of its first court of appeal, and in 1640 Queen Christina founded the Royal Academy of Åbo, the country's first university. The Russian occupation of the Great Wrath checked that growth after 1713, yet by 1800 the town had some 11,000 people. Russia came again in 1809; three years later Alexander I moved the capital of his new Grand Duchy to Helsinki, and after the Great Fire of 1827, the worst in Nordic history, the Academy followed.