Whose church it is
The confusion in older accounts is understandable, because the history did run through Russia and then stopped. The Orthodox parishes in Finland were organised as a diocese within the Russian Church in 1893 — which is where the error comes from — but Finland became independent in 1917, and in 1923 the Orthodox Church of Finland was established as an autonomous church under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. That is still its position. Only the election of a new archbishop requires Constantinople's confirmation.
It matters here for the obvious reason. A visitor who describes Uspenski as Russian, in Helsinki, in the present climate, is making a political statement without meaning to.
The bricks came from a fortress the Royal Navy destroyed
This is the best thing about the building and older accounts are right to mention it. The brick was brought from Bomarsund, the Russian fortress in the Åland islands that an Anglo-French force attacked and demolished in 1854, during the Crimean War — the campaign in the Baltic that British readers tend not to realise was part of the same war as Sevastopol.
The ruins were carted across the Gulf of Finland and built into a cathedral. The fabric of the building is salvage from a British naval victory, which is a strange and good fact, and the correct spelling of the islands carries the ring: Åland, not Aland.
Who built it, and when
The architect was Aleksei Gornostajev, who died in 1862 before it was finished; Ivan Varnek completed it. It was consecrated on 25 October 1868 and consecrated again in 1893 after work on the interior.
The style is Russian Revival — the brick mass, the gold domes, the tent roofs — set deliberately high on the rock so that it reads against the sky from the Market Square and from the sea. Inside it is dark, heavily gilded, and hung with lamps, with an iconostasis across the sanctuary. It is a working cathedral with a full liturgical calendar, and at a service the interior does what it was built to do in a way it cannot at midday on a Tuesday.
Two claims in older accounts are best left out. The cathedral is often said to be the largest Orthodox church in western Europe, but the parish's own wording is "northern and western Europe", no measurement is given, and nothing independent supports either version — so it is a claim about the building rather than a fact about it. And comparisons between its belltower and Notre-Dame's do nobody any favours.
Visiting
- Admission is charged for adults, and was free when older accounts were written. Under-eighteens go free. Payment is taken on the door.
- It closes on Mondays outside the summer season, and hours are shorter then — roughly mid-morning to late afternoon on weekdays, shorter at weekends.
- Hours are published week by week rather than by season, and services override them, so they should be checked before setting out rather than taken from any printed source.
- It is a short walk from the Market Square, over the bridge onto Katajanokka and then up. The approach is uphill and partly by steps.
Dress as for any working church. Photography during services is not appropriate and is usually not permitted.