Friels kyrka

The church was built of grey stone with sandstone quoins, probably around the year 1200, and originally consisted of a rectangular nave and a narrower, straight-ended chancel, part of which survives today. Excavated details suggest the floor once had hewn limestone slabs and that the roof included vaulting, while the bells hung in a separate stave belfry outside the building.

The church was burned during a Danish campaign through Skaraborg in 1612, during the Kalmar War, and had to be rebuilt. A new bell tower was raised in 1746, and one of the surviving bells dates from the 1670s. A sacristy was added on the north side of the chancel in 1770. In the nineteenth century the building underwent significant change: in 1861 the roof covering was replaced with tile, the windows were enlarged, and the gable heights were reduced, and in 1884 a granite tower designed by Lars Kellman replaced the old bell stave, while a porch on the south front was removed.

Inside, the ceiling was decorated in 1737 with paintings depicting the Resurrection, among other scenes. A thorough renovation in 1938 introduced a new inner ceiling and fresh internal and external paintwork, along with new fittings for the sacristy; further maintenance in the early 1950s renewed the tile roof and the limewashed rendering of the walls.

Among the church's furnishings is a medieval seven-branched wrought-iron candlestick and a brass chandelier dated 1779. A wooden figure representing God the Father survives from an altar cabinet of the 1400s, and the church also retains a font dated to the 1100s along with several other medieval wooden sculptures. The current altarpiece dates from the later 1600s; it was temporarily replaced by a Thorvaldsen-style figure of Christ when the tower was built in 1884, before being restored to its place during the 1938 renovation. The church's first organ, built by Smedmans Orgelbyggeri, was installed in 1958.