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What it takes to move a church 3 miles [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-08-19

You can watch live today as Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, moves a 35m-tall, 672-tonne (741 U.S. ton) church 3 miles down the road.

I direktsändning följer vi den världsunika flytten av Kiruna kyrka, från gamla stadskärnan till dess nya plats, fem kilometer bort. Den stora kyrkflytten tar två dagar och är en del av den omfattande stadsomvandlingen. Den ikoniska kyrkan är 40 meter bred, 35 meter hög och väger 672 ton. Arbetet kräver extrem precision och ingenting får gå fel. Programledare: Beppe Starbrink och Sverker Olofsson.

It's slow going—the 113-year-old structure, mounted on a trailer, moves at only 500 meters an hour. Streetlights and other obstacles had to be removed along the route to make way for the building, 24 yards wide at its slimmest.

The journey began with a blessing from the church's vicar, Lena Tjärnberg, and Bishop Åsa Nyström of the Diocese of Luleå. As the short ceremony ended, engines rumbled to life and the massive wooden church began inching forward. In the first hour, it managed just 30m, the trailers' wheels slowly turning under its weight. Large crowds lined the streets under clear blue skies, watching in awe as the timber structure rolled forward.

The church's current location was suffering subsidence. Why are they moving it so far? Why not. Even larger buildings can be moved using similar techniques. The Vautravers residential building in Chicago's Lakeview East neighborhood was moved 30 feet over to allow nearby train tracks to be straightened—a job costing $1.75m. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest building to be moved was the 19,840-ton Fuzuli Street mansion in Baku, Azerbaijan, moved 35 feet for a road-widening project.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/08/19/what-it-takes-to-move-a-church-3-miles.html

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