In Turenki, the largest urban area in Janakkala, about 7,500 residents live. Turenki offers a rich range of services from grocery stores to specialty shops and restaurants, as well as several daycares, primary and secondary schools, and a high school. Turenki also features a guest marina that provides access to Lake Vanajavesi via the Hiidenjoki River, along with a skiing and downhill biking center called Kalpalinna.

The development of Turenki was significantly influenced by the country’s oldest railway, which ran from Helsinki to Hämeenlinna and was opened in 1862. Turenki’s grand wooden station building, one of the oldest in Finland, was built considerably larger than would be expected for a small village, as the idea was to make Turenki a junction station for the railway to St. Petersburg.

The railway is likely one of the reasons why the Hämeen raw sugar factory committee decided to build its sugar factory in Turenki. The launch of the sugar factory’s machines in 1948 also initiated the development of Turenki into one of Finland’s most industrialized rural municipalities.

In the 1960s, the sugar factory was joined by an ice cream factory when Valio’s Central Cooperative decided to establish one large factory instead of three small ones, as ice cream consumption was skyrocketing. Ice cream is still produced in Turenki, but sugar production ceased in 1998.

Turenki also became the administrative center of the municipality when the now-demolished Päivärinne villa was purchased as the municipal building in 1917. Until then, the municipality had been managed from the school in Tarinmaa. The current municipal building was completed in 1963.

The layers of different eras are still very visible in Turenki. On a daytime walk, one can switch from one atmosphere to another and immerse oneself in the lives of the late Janakkala residents: imagining the curious gazes in the old wooden houses around the station as the steam train arrives, and hearing the factory whistle in the center dominated by industrial buildings before continuing on to new single-family home areas.