Tampere Cathedral

The grey granite church in Tampere is one of the masterpieces of National Romanticism. Massive walls, a tall tower and details in stone give a feeling of a fortress. Inside, Hugo Simberg painted frescoes that shocked his contemporaries: a wounded angel and the garden of death.

Lars Sonck was only 30 when he won the competition for a new church in Tampere, Finland’s fast-growing industrial city. The church was built in 1902–1907 and was at first called St John’s Church. It was built of grey granite, hewn in rough blocks. Sonck drew inspiration from medieval Finnish stone churches, from American architecture and from Finnish nature.

The church has a plan that gathers the congregation around the pulpit and the altar, in line with the ideas of the time about Protestant church building. The tall tower and several lower towers give the building a powerful silhouette. The decoration was carried out by some of Finland’s leading Symbolist artists. Hugo Simberg painted a ring of young boys carrying a garland, The Wounded Angel and The Garden of Death, and on the ceiling a winged serpent that has been interpreted as a symbol of sin. Magnus Enckell painted the altarpiece The Resurrection.

The frescoes met with fierce criticism when they were finished, and the serpent on the ceiling upset many. The church became the cathedral of the diocese of Tampere in 1923. It is regarded as one of the foremost works of Finnish National Romanticism, together with the National Museum and the Pohjola building in Helsinki. It shows how architecture and the visual arts could be united in a shared national and spiritual expression.