Protected buildingInternationally known

Tampere Old Church

Tampere

Why visit

At the edge of Keskustori stands the oldest public building in central Tampere — one of Finland's early neoclassical cross churches, of wood, clad in horizontal boarding and crowned by a low dome rising above the attic.

Look for: Pause before the Gethsemane altarpiece (1831) painted by R.W. Ekman, and notice the Empire-style pulpit from the same year, drawn by Aleksander Engel.

About this site

Wooden church, cruciform church. The oldest public building in Tampere's city centre, the church beside the Central Square, is one of the country's early neoclassical cruciform churches. By type it is a cruciform church with unequal arms. The sacristy is in the eastern transept arm. The horizontally boarded outer walls are articulated by round-arched windows and corner pilasters.

At the crossing there is a flat dome rising above the attic. By type the church is a hybrid of cruciform and long church. In the church hall there are flat barrel vaults in the transept arms and a coffered dome above the crossing. The church's interior and its fixed furnishings were restored to correspond to the original design idea in a 1950s restoration.

The altarpiece with Gethsemane motif is from 1831 and was painted by R.W. Ekman; the Empire-style pulpit from 1831 was designed by Aleksander Engel. The city's first park was planted around the church in 1835.

Official description (Museovirasto) — machine-translated from Finnish

The Tampere Old Church is a wooden cross church opened in 1825 in Tampere, Finland near the Central Square. The old church is mainly used by the Swedish-speaking Lutheran congregation in Tampere. The church was designed by Italian-born Carlo Bassi and completed in 1824. The belfry, designed by C. L. Engel, was completed in 1828. The Old Church is the oldest surviving building in the city center of Tampere, and the adjoining belfry is the second oldest.

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