Savonlinna Cathedral is located in Savonlinna

Savonlinna

Savonlinna is a town and a municipality of inhabitants in the southeast of Finland, in the heart of the Saimaa lake region. The Finnish name of the town means "Castle of Savonia" and the Swedish name means "Newcastle".- History :...

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

. It was built between 1874 and 1878 and designed by architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Axel Hampus Dahlström in the Gothic Revival

Gothic Revival architecture

The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

 style. It has room for 1000 people.

History

The people of Savonlinna had to go to the Sääminki church when they didn't have their own church. In 1850 governor Aleksander Thesleff gave order to build a church in Savonniemi. The actual construction began in 1874.

In 1896 the new diocese of Savonlinna was founded and the Savonlinna church became a cathedral. The first bishop was Gustaf Johansson

Gustaf Johansson (bishop)

Gustaf Johansson was the Archbishop of Turku, and the spiritual head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland between 1899 and 1930.-External links:*...

. In 1925 the bishop's seat was moved to Vyborg

Vyborg

Vyborg is a town in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, situated on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of the Bay of Vyborg, to the northwest of St. Petersburg and south from Russia's border with Finland, where the Saimaa Canal enters the Gulf of Finland...

, but the church still retained "cathedral" as its name.

During the Winter War

Winter War

The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...

 in 1 May 1940 Savonlinna was bombed and the church was damaged. It was restored in 1947–1948 by architect Bertel Liljeqvist. In 1990–1991 it was renovated by Ansu Ånström.