Finnish-minority since the 13th century. At the end of the 15th century up to 20% of the population in Stockholm consisted of Finns. The has offered church services since the 16th century, and in 1725 the Finnish Church was opened. 74,000 people in Stockholm have a Finnish-background, which makes Stockholm home to the largest Finnish population in Sweden. Finnish, alongside with Meänkieli and the Sami languages have a protected minority status in Stockholm. This gives the right to use their language when contacting authorities, as well as the right to child and elderly care in their languages. Romani chib and Yiddish are also recognized minority languages, and have a strengthened right to their language in education. The entire Stockholm metropolitan area, consisting of 26 municipalities, has a population of over 2.2 million, making it the most populous city in the Nordic region. The Stockholm urban area, defined only for statistical purposes, had a total population of 1,630,738 in 2015. In the following municipalities some of the districts are contained within the Stockholm urban area, though not all: Religion The Swedish church consists of 27 parishes in Stockholm with almost 50 churches, but also a large number of churches belonging to the free church. Stockholm has six mosques. There are three active synagogues and a community of 4,300 members in Stockholm, which corresponds to 0.4% of Stockholm's population. It is the largest Jewish community in Scandinavia. Culture Apart from being Sweden's capital, Stockholm houses many national cultural institutions. The Stockholm region is home to three of Sweden's World Heritage Sites – spots judged as invaluable places that belong to all of humanity: The Drottningholm Palace, Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery) and Birka. In 1998, Stockholm was named European Capital of Culture. Literature Authors connected to Stockholm include the poet and songwriter Carl Michael Bellman (1740–1795), novelist and dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), and novelist Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941), all of whom made Stockholm part of their works. Martin Beck is a fictional Swedish police detective from Stockholm, who is the main character in a series of 10 novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, collectively titled The Story of a Crime, and often based in Stockholm. Other authors with notable heritage in Stockholm were the Nobel Prize laureate Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976) and the popular poet and composer Evert Taube (1890–1976). The novelist Per Anders Fogelström (1917–1998) wrote a popular series of historical novels depicting