The Orthodox Capital of Finland

Finland’s Orthodox Church Museum, Riisa, is celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the foundation of its home city with this exhibition of photographs depicting the “Orthodox History of Kuopio”. Its principal sources have been the photo archives of Kuopio’s Museum of Cultural History, the Orthodox Parish of Kuopio and Riisa’s own collection of photographic material. The main emphasis in this exhibition is on the city and its people, who together make up what we can look on as the Orthodox Capital of Finland.

Kuopio has indeed played a major part in the history of the Orthodox Church of Finland. Having initially been a small, rather remote parish, it emerged from the Second World War as the central venue for the Orthodox Church, and as the city developed in the post-war period, so buildings connected with the Orthodox Church came to occupy a more prominent place in it, as can be seen in the photographs representing the history of Kuopio from the autonomy period up to the present day.

At its peak the Orthodox Church accounted for just over 10% of the population of Kuopio and impressive processions, patronal festivals and other events took place regularly in the city. These festivities and the numbers of people attending them have diminished somewhat in more recent times, but this Orthodox cultural legacy has remained a distinctive part of the city’s history.