chruch of the magnificat (at Lohja)

I quite like Avo Pärt's works (especially the Magnificat). Years ago when I first listened to those haunting beautiful choral works (and reading the CD liner notes) I never thought I would be able to walk into that chruch ... after all ... Finland seemed so far away from Australia.

Well ... as I'm now in Finland and we were in Helsinki with time on our hands I thought we'd stop by and look at it.

From the outside its an interestingly different church architecture for Finland (which is largely wooden churches and Lutheran). However this church dates from the the middle ages (around the 15th Century) when Finland was in the "Swedish Period" of occupation.

The most magnificent thing about the building (apart from its acoustics) are its interior artworks of early medieval Christianity.

Its stunning.


What I particularly like is the depictions of early Christian stories interwoven with daemons and other creatures of mythology. In some cases the accounts of what appear to be the apostles show what seems to be different numbers of followers to the commonly accepted numbers.

Anyway I'll leave you with a few inteirior shots which will say more about the Church of St Lawerence than I can.



each ceiling segment is richly decorated ... you could spend hours there just looking at the art works

as a note, lighting and colour temperature are a nightmare if you don't use special techniques (eg the image below for a dodge and burn nightmare and above for use of HDRI to smooth out lighting differences)