Aulanko swim and (man-made) bear cave

Another after-work evening activity: visiting Aulanko's spa (hosted by the Scandic hotel Aulanko). This is a historic spa location, the old spa building is still there but today's spa visits are in the new fancy building. I had also heard about "bear cave" in the adjoining Aulanko nature park. 

The park is wonderful, and strolling around was amazing -- my first time there. I visited the rock tower, wonderful views of course, but also wonderful views from the viewing platform on the hill where the tower stands on. There's a high cliff dropping down from the hill and underneath the viewing platform, towards the lake Aulanko and the forests. Views really are stunning!

And then I descended the 330 steps down from the tower and the platform. Quite a walk, particularly when coming back :-)

Turns out the bear cave is not a natural cave, it is a wonderful sculpture in an excavated rock hole along the route down. It was crafted by sculptor Robert Stigell, and the rumor has it that he wanted a live bear cub from the Korkeasaari Zoo for his model, but when that turned impractical, he settled for a mounted bear cub instead.

On to the spa. I have been wanting to visit there for some time, but the facility has been under maintenance in April-May so could only do it now. 

The spa luxurious, it has a 25 meter swimming pool (just 2-3 lanes though), a half circle bigger warm pool with various water jets, a small outdoor pool, two cold plunge pools, a kiddie pool, and a bigger jacuzzi. The spa also favored by families, so be aware that there can be groups of kids in swimming school at the same time you are visiting, like in my case. Nice.

On the sauna side, there's plenty: the saunas differ between men's and women's sides, but on men's side there's a regular Finnish sauna, a steam sauna, and a "wilderness sauna". The wilderness is a fairly regular one, but just has wood/logs on the walls, and is darker. I think I've been to better wilderness or log saunas even in swimming halls, but it is really nice to have three different saunas. On the women's side there's a salt sauna.

The home page of the hotel & spa is here. You can visit the spa as a hotel guest, but also as a day visitor. Adult ticket to the spa as a day visitor costs between 19.50 to 28€ depending on day and time. Before 2pm on the weekdays it costs 19.50€, in the evenings 22€ and on Friday evenings and weekends 28€.

More information about the bear cave can be found here. It is in coordinates N 61.022598 E 24.470989.

Views:

Bear cave and walk down:

Spa photos below, starting with the old sauna building and then the new spa building:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, sauna and swimming stories from planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. The pool photo in this article is from the spa's home page; all rights reserved by them.