Otto Pius Hippius designed Charles's Church, or Kaarli kirik, on Tõnismägi hill in Tallinn, with the ceiling solution developed with Rudolf von Bernhardt. Construction ran from 1862 to 1870, and the church was inaugurated in 1870 while still incomplete. The two western towers were enlarged in 1882.
Swedish King Charles XI commissioned a church on the site in 1670, and a wooden church burned in 1710 during the Great Northern War. The present Lutheran church is a Latin cross hall church in Romanesque Revival style, with two western towers flanking a rose window and a ceiling supported without pillars.
Its apse fresco by Johann Köler was the first fresco in Estonia made by an ethnic Estonian. The bells come from the original wooden church and were cast in Stockholm in 1696. It seats about 1,500 people.
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