The inhabitants of Kempele were permitted to build their own prayer room in 1688. Despite of restrictions they constructed a real church which was completed in 1691. The building master was Matti Härmä. The wooden church has some gothic features. The belfry was built in 1769.
The interior is decorated by the famous church painter Mikael Toppelius between 1785 and 1795. The French-style pulpit is very personal decorated also by Toppelius.
The Church is surrounded by a cemetery. The oldest graves data back to the late 1700’s. The are also total of about 150 older graves under the church. Burials to the church ended in 1796.
Built around AD 90 to entertain the legionaries stationed at the fort of Caerleon (Isca), the impressive amphitheatre was the Roman equivalent of today’s multiplex cinema. Wooden benches provided seating for up to 6,000 spectators, who would gather to watch bloodthirsty displays featuring gladiatorial combat and exotic wild animals.
Long after the Romans left, the amphitheatre took on a new life in Arthurian legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the somewhat imaginative 12th-century scholar, wrote in his History of the Kings of Britain that Arthur was crowned in Caerleon and that the ruined amphitheatre was actually the remains of King Arthur’s Round Table.
Today it is the most complete Roman amphitheatre in Britain.