Helsinki Old Church was completed in 1826 under design of Carl Ludvig Engel. It is an Evangelical Lutheran Church that was supposed to serve as a temporary church while much larger Helsinki Cathedral would be constructed on a site of demolished church of Ulrika Eleonora. However explosion of population of Helsinki mad sure that it would remain open. Today Helsinki Old Church is open to the public. It can house over 1200 people and regularly holds services including Mass on Sundays in 10am and Wednesday at 8am.
The old church was originally intended only as a temporary solution
when Ulrika Eleonora's church received a demolition order from
Senatintorti. Among other things, a chandelier and benches were moved
from Ulrika Eleonora's church to the old church; The current pulpit of
the old church is still of that design. Helsinki Cathedral was already
under construction, but was not completed until 1852. Because of the
temporary nature of the Old Church, it was built of wood and no bells
were even purchased. Later, an electronic clock device was purchased to
replace the church bells.
The altarpiece in the church is "Jesus
blesses the children" by Robert Wilhelm Ekman. The light-colored work
was originally intended as an altarpiece for the cathedral, but Emperor
Nicholas I thought it was too gentle and donated the dark "Taking of
Christ from the Cross" to the cathedral.
The Old Church is
surrounded by the Old Church Park, which was a former cemetery and was
used as such long before the Old Church. It is sometimes also called
"plague park" because a large number of victims of the plague that hit
Helsinki in 1710 were buried in the cemetery. No burials have been made
in the park since 1919, and nowadays the park is almost exclusively used
for recreation and as a transit space. The church is located on the
northern edge of the park along Lönnrotinkatu. A gate designed by Engel
leads to the park from Boulevard, from where the wide and straight park
corridor leading to the church begins. However, only a side door leads
to the church, because like in most other old churches, the Old Church
has the main door at the west end and the altar at the east end.
The old church was the oldest church in all of Helsinki for a long time,
until in 2009 part of Sipoo was annexed to Helsinki and at the same time
the Östersundom church moved to the Helsinki side, thus "inheriting" the
title of the oldest church in Helsinki.
In the northeast corner
of the cemetery is the merchant Johan Sederholm's grave chapel.
The old church has about 1,200 seats. It belongs to the Helsinki
cathedral parish. Mass is celebrated in the church on Sundays at 10 a.m.
and on Wednesdays at 8 a.m.
The old church is a very popular
baptism, ordination and blessing church. In 1998, the second wedding of
then Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen was celebrated in the church. Perhaps
the most famous persons buried in the old church are state councilors K.
A. Fagerholm and Johannes Virolainen, Väinö Tanner who served as prime
minister, finance minister and foreign minister during the Winter War,
architect Alvar Aalto, Olympic running champion Paavo Nurmi and
composers Erkki Melartin and Aarre Merikanto.