Skepptuna kyrka

The earliest parts of the church date from the beginning of the 13th century. Around 1300 a fire damaged the building, prompting repairs that included demolishing the original narrow chancel and extending the church eastward with a new straight-ended chancel, turning it into a hall church. The main phase of construction took place in the 15th century, when Uppsala Cathedral served as a model. At this time the present tower was built, the walls raised, and the roof made steeper. The barrel vault of the nave was then replaced with the star vaults of brick that survive today.

Several later alterations shaped the building further. Windows were added to the previously blind north wall in the 1730s, and a doorway was cut into the tower's west wall in 1755. In 1776 the wall separating the chancel from the nave was demolished, and the same year a rotting spire was replaced with the tower's present broken-line roof profile. The church bells, once housed in a freestanding bell tower, were moved into the tower itself in 1789.

Restoration work in 1907, overseen by the architect Gustaf Améen, uncovered medieval paintings on the chancel walls that had been hidden beneath later additions. A further extensive restoration in 1946 involved cleaning these paintings and repainting the woodwork, along with the installation of electric heating and lighting.

The church's most celebrated treasure is its altarpiece, a carved and painted retable produced in Brussels in the early 16th century, reputedly from the workshop of the noted master Jan Bormans. It is decorated with numerous small, finely worked scenes depicting biblical subjects, and its medieval paintings remain in good condition.

Other notable furnishings include a limestone font from the early 1500s, a silver communion vessel with a base dating to the 1300s, and several brass chandeliers, the oldest of which, from the 16th century, is crowned with a figure of the Virgin and Child. A gilded crucifix in late Baroque style was donated to the church in 1707, and the pulpit, in Gustavian style, dates from 1792. Two medieval treasures associated with the church—a carved figure attributed to the Lübeck master Bernt Notke and a richly embroidered cope—are now held in the Historical Museum rather than in the church itself.