Dominating the city’s skyline, a short walk from Market Square and the harborfront, is one of the city’s most visible symbols, a monumental green-domed cathedral erected between 1830 and 1852. Built in a gracefully symmetrical neoclassical style that reflected the glory of ancient Greece and Rome, it was designed by German-born architect Carl Ludvig Engel as part of the 19th-century reconstruction of Helsinki (a fire had destroyed most of the city after it was forcibly annexed by the Russians).
Today the rites celebrated inside conform to the Evangelical Lutheran denomination. Extensive renovations, both to the cathedral and to its crypt, in 1998, brought it back to its original grandeur.