Vårdinge kyrka

The original grey-stone church, built towards the end of the twelfth century, had a west tower and a narrower, straight-ended chancel. Parts of this earliest structure survive within the current fabric, including the inner walls of the tower and sections of the nave. During the 1300s the chancel was widened to match the nave, and a sacristy was added to the north-east.

Around the mid-1400s the church was given brick vaulting across its three bays, decorated with medieval ceiling paintings attributed to Albertus Pictor, one of the best-known church painters of the period. These paintings were later limewashed over and forgotten until they were uncovered again in 1956. Only the westernmost vault retains its medieval decoration, since the other two vaults were rebuilt in the nineteenth century and their paintings lost. A crucifix and a sculpture of Christ as the Man of Sorrows, both dating from the late 1400s, are also kept in the church.

The building was substantially altered in 1822 to designs by the architect Henric Måsbeck, who added north and south transepts, incorporating the walls of an older burial chapel built in 1638 for Mårten Rosenstierna. It is this early nineteenth-century remodelling that gives the church its present neoclassical exterior and much of its interior character, including the west portal and gallery. The church also contains several noble graves, among them one from 1687 intended for Alexander Hummerhielm.

A further restoration in 1894, led by Fredrik Lilljekvist, introduced new brick vaulting resting on two stone-capped columns between nave and chancel, and refitted the interior in a Gothic Revival style; the medieval west vault was left undisturbed. Restoration work continued in stages through the twentieth century, including the rediscovery of the Albertus Pictor paintings in 1956–57 and the addition of a stained-glass window by Jan Brazda in the old Romanesque chancel opening in 1958.

The unusual arrangement of the pews, noted by visitors, creates an inviting and distinctive atmosphere in the nave. The current organ was built in 1938 by E A Setterquist & Son of Örebro, reusing the case from an earlier 1844 instrument; an even older organ from 1708, by Eric Kuper, was sold on in the nineteenth century and its facade is now preserved at the Swedish History Museum.