Temppeliaukio Rock Church, Amos Rex and the Kamppi Chapel of Silence

A ten-minute walk west from the Central Railway Station takes you through a remarkable trio of postwar and contemporary Finnish architecture, each solving the challenge of northern light and urban noise in a completely original way.

1. Temppeliaukio Church (The Rock Church, Lutherinkatu 3)

Designed by architect brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen and consecrated in 1969 in the centre of residential Töölö square, Temppeliaukio Church (Kalliokirkko) was not built upward on top of the rock outcrop; instead, the architects blasted a circular cavity straight down into the solid two-billion-year-old reddish granite bedrock. Rather than plastering over the blast marks, they left the jagged, naturally seeping rock walls completely exposed (which gives the circular hall extraordinary concert-hall acoustics) and capped the chamber with a monumental 24-metre-diameter dome lined with 22 kilometres of unspooled copper wire ribbon. Between the uneven rock rim and the copper dome runs a ring of 180 vertical glass skylights that washes the stone altar in natural daylight. Check the official parish calendar before walking up, as the church briefly pauses tourist admissions during services, weddings and lunchtime organ or piano concerts.

2. Amos Rex and the Lasipalatsi Courtyards

Walk ten minutes south-east back down Fredrikinkatu to Mannerheimintie, where the white functionalist 1936 Lasipalatsi ("Glass Palace") building frames a public square dotted with futuristic, dome-like brick mounds pierced by giant angled circular windows. Those mounds are the roof of Amos Rex, designed by JKMM Architects in 2018 by excavating 13,000 cubic metres of rock directly *underneath* the protected historic square to create vast, column-free subterranean galleries for large-scale digital, interactive and modern art exhibitions. Even without a museum ticket, anyone can climb and sit on the curving outdoor brick domes in the square.

3. Kamppi Chapel of Silence (Kampin kappeli)

Two minutes south on lively Narinkkatori square outside the Kamppi shopping centre and metro hub stands a warm, windowless curved vessel built entirely of waxed spruce, alder and ash wood by K2S Architects in 2012. Step inside the Kamppi Chapel of Silence for free: the street noise vanishes instantly inside an 11.5-metre-high curved alder timber cocoon lit softly from above, open to people of all faiths or none simply to sit in complete silence for ten minutes.