The Gaoler's Room

There have been prison cells in Turku Castle throughout its history. The thick-walled rooms of the castle have provided a useful place to house suspected criminals even before imprisonment was introduced as the form of punishment it now takes. During the Middle Ages and the 16th century, criminal punishments included fines, shaming, and corporal punishment.

Under the wooden floor of the Gaoler’s Room is one of the most well-known prisons in Turku Castle: the prison cell of Jaakko Ilkka, a commander in the Cudgel War, a 16th century peasant uprising. Jaakko Pentinpoika Ilkka was a landowner and a rural merchant from Ilmajoki in South Ostrobothnia. He sided with Regent Duke Charles in his feud with Klaus Fleming, a commander and supporter of King Sigismund III Vasa. After a skirmish with horsemen in January 1596, Jaakko Ilkka was imprisoned and brought to Turku Castle. However, Ilkka managed to escape no later than the following autumn – his escape route is still unknown!

Next to Jaakko Ilkka’s prison cell was the prison privy, which connects to the same cesspit as the Porter’s Lodge’s privy. The stone seat of the toilet can still be seen. The third seat connected to the same cesspit was located behind the closed wooden door in the corner of the room.

Up until well into the 18th century, there was a pit prison at the end of the room, nicknamed “Kuoppatorni” (lit. “Pit Tower”), into which those being interrogated were lowered with a rope. This was a way to seek confessions to crimes they were suspected of. The pit prison was taken out of use in 1772.

The Gaoler’s Room’s outer wall was once part of the castle’s oldest curtain wall, built during the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. At the time, the many-metre-thick wall reached up to nine metres in height. In the Middle Ages, due to security reasons, windows were not usually built into the curtain walls of castles, only loopholes with embrasures that flared inward. Guards manned the loopholes and, when needed, defended the castle with crossbows and other ranged weaponry. Walkways for defensive purposes also ran atop the curtain wall.