Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral

Interesting facts

The new cathedral was built over the old converted theatre, which served as support and scaffolding during construction and was demolished shortly before the consecration.

Its designer, Frans Harmes, was a Redemptorist brother, and the exterior drew on Redemptorist churches in Roosendaal in the Netherlands and in Boston.

The three bells in the west tower, named Alphonsus, Rosa and Johannes, were cast by Petit & Fritsen in the Netherlands and have hung there since August 1885.

The heaviest bell, Johannes, weighs 827 kilograms, nearly four times as much as the smallest, Alphonsus.

Each tower is ringed by four smaller flanking turrets, and the neo-Gothic wooden spires were added only around 1901.

In 1926, forty years after it opened, the exterior of the church was painted yellow and grey.

The remains of Peter Donders, beatified in 1982, were moved from the churchyard into a tomb in the left wing of the church in 1921.

Along with St. George's Cathedral in Georgetown, Guyana, it ranks among the largest wooden churches in South America.

The organ was originally fitted with about 1,550 pipes, many of which were stolen over the years.

Why it is worth it

The Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Paramaribo is built almost entirely of timber, and inside it is a hall of bare wood. Walls, columns and vaults are of unpainted Surinamese cedar, glowing warm in the tropical light. The building is about 59 metres long, 16.5 metres wide and 14.6 metres high in the main hall, and its towers rise to 44 metres at the bronze cross. It is often described as the largest wooden building in the Western Hemisphere, and it holds about 900 people.

The site has a curious history. In 1826 Paramaribo's Catholics took over De Verrezene Phoenix, a theatre built in 1809 by members of the city's Dutch Jewish community, and turned it into a church; it became a cathedral when a diocese was created in 1858. As the congregation outgrew it, the diocese commissioned a new building on the same plot from Frans Harmes. Construction began on 30 January 1883, the church was consecrated in 1885, and the towers were completed in 1901. The congregation for whom it was built included freed slaves and contract labourers. The gate to the churchyard reached its two-hundredth anniversary in 2009.

Wood in a humid climate is fragile, and the church nearly failed: after a poor restoration in 1977 it began to tilt and suffered from termites. Pope Francis raised it to a minor basilica in 2014. The church holds the tomb of Peerke Donders, the Dutch priest who cared for leprosy patients at Batavia in Suriname, and three bells hang in the west tower.

Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, stands on the Suriname River near the Atlantic coast. Its historic centre, a grid of white-painted wooden houses and churches laid out under Dutch colonial rule, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Getting there

The cathedral is in the historic centre of Paramaribo, Suriname. Johan Adolf Pengel International Airport (PBM) at Zanderij is about 42 km to the south.

Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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