The ancient church of the Franciscans (now known as the Riddarsholms-Kyrka) is a brick structure of the early fourteenth century, raised a few years after the convent was founded; it is not greatly impressive. Nave of five bays, quire of three, triple apse to the east, clumsy-looking tower to the west. Round pillars hold up a heavy vault, whitewash daubed, and, as is so commonly the case in Scandinavia, unrelieved by any clearstorey. On to the tower has been hoisted a cast iron spire that rises 290 feet into the clear air and looks as awkward and unhappy as the similar feature over the cathedral at Rouen. The great interest of the church is that it has become the valhalla of warrior, sage and king; the floor is laid in gravestones, the walls blaze with the painted arms of the Knights of the Seraphim Order, the air is thick with the banners that Swedes have won in war. In the quire is the effigy of the founder, but as space in the church was small classic chapels have been added both north and south to be the last resting-places of other of Sweden's honoured dead. On the sun-warmed side of the quire a chapel bears date 1633, and its rather indifferent architecture is forgotten from the fact that it contains, within a later sarcophagus of green marble, the ashes of Gustavus Adolphus, one of the noblest of mankind, the hero king who perished victorious on the field of Lützen (1632). Opposite on the north is the Carolinian chapel, a domed Classic structure with detached columns outside where rest the renowned twelfth Charles and other princes of the Vasa House. Another chapel bears the name of Bernadotte, founder of the ruling line. It was before the altar of this church during the fourteenth century that the arrogant noble, Bo Jonsson, called Grip, because his arms were a griffin's head, who "ruled the land with a glance of his eye,"[124] uncontrolled by the helpless king, hewed in pieces his foe Karl Nilsson, and was never called to account on this side of the veil. Here, too, among the dead in later days, far into the night mused the third Gustavus, hoping to receive some omen from his fathers' graves. It is rather misleading to call this comparatively humble shrine the Westminster Abbey of the land that holds the Cathedral of Upsala and so many other glorious fanes. Instead of one of the grandest minsters on the earth, echoing several times a day with Christian praise, it is a somewhat commonplace church whose silence is broken only by the chatter of tourists, save on the anniversary of some hero's death or when another monarch has entered upon his last sleep. Nevertheless there is a deep and haunting interest in this last earthly resting-place of so many who have helped to shape the world. Close to this church is a fine statue by Fogelberg to Birger Jarl.