This is a gist how to use unicode as Tornado URLS (here i used arabic char)

arabic_tornado.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#coding: utf-8

import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web
import tornado.escape
#import urllib2 old way

arabic_word = u'السلام'
arab = tornado.escape.url_escape(arabic_word)
#arab = urllib2.quote(arabic_word.encode('utf8')) old way
# it will return '%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85'
# this is what is called url escaping, in javascript you use encodeURI('السلام')


class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        self.write("السلام عليكم")

application = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/{0}".format(arab), MainHandler),
])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    application.listen(8000)
    tornado.ioloop.IOLoop.instance().start()