Rytterne kyrka

The present church was built between 1815 and 1819 to serve a newly merged parish, after the two older medieval churches of Stora and Lilla Rytterne fell into disrepair and were largely abandoned. It was designed by the architect Samuel Enander with master builder Olof Sjöström, the same pair responsible for Sevalla church nearby. Although the first service was held in the still-unfinished building a year earlier, work on furnishings such as pews and the altarpiece continued for some years after the formal consecration.

Built in a neoclassical style, the church has a rectangular nave, a west tower with a lantern and cross, and a semicircular apse to the east, now used as a sacristy. The exterior, with its whitewashed rubble-stone walls and round-arched windows, has survived largely unchanged, but the interior looks quite different from its original form. In 1915–1916 the Västerås city architect Erik Hahr carried out a substantial remodelling, dividing the once single, barrel-vaulted hall into a three-aisled, basilica-like space with flat ceilings beneath the old vault, and creating a new sacristy in the former apse.

Several striking objects survive from the two demolished medieval churches. Two fonts remain: a Gothic one, still in use and thought to date from around 1300, and an older Romanesque font, previously built into the wall of Stora Rytterne church and reputedly once used as a poor box. Three medieval wooden sculptures are also preserved, including a fragmentary Madonna figure missing its heads, a headless and armless crucifix figure, and a sculpture of Saint Martin.

The altar carries a large carved altarpiece made in northern Germany at the end of the fifteenth century, depicting the Mass of Pope Gregory I surrounded by scenes of the Passion and several saints. It has sometimes been attributed to noted late-medieval sculptors, though no attribution is firmly proven. Two thirteenth-century doorways from Stora Rytterne, rediscovered in a storehouse in 1979, now stand in the porch, and a pew endowed by the statesman Axel Oxenstierna's family bears the initials and arms of his wife, Anna Bååt.

The two church bells hanging in the tower are believed to date from the early sixteenth century, cast by the bell-founder Petrus André, with Latin inscriptions invoking saints associated with the earlier medieval churches. The ruins of Stora and Lilla Rytterne churches, a few kilometres from the present building, remain visible and are occasionally used for services and weddings, though visitors should not assume regular access without checking locally.