Church of St. Peter and Paul

The construction of the present temple began in 1832 with the live participation of the Governor-General of Finland Count A. A. Zakrevsky, who asked for funds from the emperor. The building committee was headed by the city commandant. The temple was built on the site of a burned Lutheran pickaxe, on the main square, on the place indicated on April 1, 1830 when Nicholas I visited the city. The construction cost 140,000 rubles, taken from the Committee of Theological Schools, completed in 1835 by contractors, local merchants Vavulin and Ushakov and consecrated on February 21, 1837.

Architect I.N. Kudryavtsev, a connoisseur of Russian church architecture, studied the history of the construction of the church, but his work was not crowned with success. In the archive of the department of historical buildings of the management of museums in Finland, he managed to find drawings with the inscription: Highest approved on August 2, 1830, signed by lieutenant engineer Voloshin and member of the building committee Kryukovsky, but they are not original. In 1836, a round stone chapel was built on the site of the disassembled church, the author of which was undoubtedly the same unknown architect. On the night of May 9-10, 1840, the church suffered from a severe fire, but the parish was unable to cover the costs of 2,104 rubles in silver due to its poverty. Only two years later, it was allowed to use untouchable means for repairs.