Story
The story of Helsinki Cathedral
On 17 June 1917, in the unrest before Finnish independence, followers of the anarchist Jean Boldt occupied this church after the Sunday service and held it for about 18 hours before the militia cleared it. Back then it was still St Nicholas's Church, built from 1830 to 1852 as a tribute to Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland.
Carl Ludvig Engel designed it as the climax of his Senate Square, but he died in 1840, and his successor Ernst Lohrmann added the four small domes around the tall green dome. Look up at the roofline: zinc statues of the Twelve Apostles, cast in Berlin, stand at its apexes and corners.
It is nicknamed the White Cathedral, yet it is actually painted in three very similar shades of light grey. Inside, the austere Lutheran interior seats about 1,300 people, and statues of Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon and Mikael Agricola, the Finnish Reformer, stand in the choir.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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