The Holy Cross Chapel

• Address: Skarppakullantie 2, 20720 Turku
• Phone: +358 40 3417037
• Phone: +358 40 3417253 (reservations)
• E-mail: turku.pr-kappeli@evl.fi
• Open by agreement

The brochure of the Holy Cross Chapel PDF

Everything superfluous has been left out of this chapel. Its focus is entirely on that which is essential: what You were, what I am, what He is. Even in the midst of grief there is a sense of release. 

Two funeral chapels serve the people of Turku on the Turku Cemetery established in 1807. The grounds of the Turku Cemetery occupy 60 hectares (almost 10 acres) of land. 

The Holy Cross Chapel, designed by architect Pekka Pitkänen, was built in 1967 on the south side of the cemetery. The chapel is a modern concrete construction with three funeral chapels and a crematorium. 

The Holy Cross Chapel is ascetic in the extreme, harsh almost. It realises the grim aesthetics of the concrete block, the beauty of which is in its lack of adornment. The simplicity and emptiness allow room for contemplation and sanctity. The simplicity of this unadorned space is in stark contrast to elaborate rituals and material excess.

The architect Professor Pekka Pitkänen (1927-2018) was a well-known modernist and minimalist whose buildings epitomise the oft-quoted minimalist motto, ‘Less is more’. In the Holy Cross Chapel, as in other buildings by Pitkänen, geometric shapes and the relationships between them are key.