Valls kyrka

The church was constructed from limestone during the Middle Ages, taking the form of a west-tower church with a narrower chancel, apse and a sacristy on the north side of the chancel. The two-aisled nave and chancel are thought to date from the early 1200s, with the tower added around the mid-1200s but only completed to its present considerable height towards the end of that century, when the sacristy was probably also built.

An unusual feature of the plan is a narrow chamber with its own separate entrance in the tower's south wall. This is believed to have served as a prayer room for people barred from the main church space, who could follow the mass through a small opening, or hagioscope, in the wall.

The exterior is dominated by the imposing gallery tower, with its pointed gables and colonnaded sound openings arranged over three storeys, topped by a short octagonal spire. The nave facade carries a round-arch frieze, and of the church's three round-arched portals, the tower's north portal is the largest and most elaborate. The windows were altered and new ones added during the 19th century. Inside, the nave is covered by four vaults, cross-vaults to the east and so-called mussel vaults to the west, supported on a central column with an ornamented capital. A narrow, round-arched opening in the wall leads through to the chancel.

Among the notable furnishings is a sandstone font attributed to the workshop of Majestatis, dating from the close of the 1100s. In the apse stands a wall cupboard with richly carved doors from around 1300, and a niche in the apse's south wall bears a runic inscription of similar date. The pulpit dates from the early 1700s and was painted in 1728, with the decoration later renewed by Johan Nicolaus Weller; the church also holds memorial paintings connected with the Weller family and local clergy. The sandstone altarpiece was made in 1684 by the stonemason Rasmus Larsson Ockes of Burgsvik, replacing an earlier altar cabinet made in northern Germany or Denmark in the early 1500s, which is now preserved at the Gotland Museum (Fornsalen).

Several medieval grave slabs survive in the church, commemorating local figures from the 14th century, alongside fragments of other early stones. A notable stone once associated with a local farmer-chieftain, seen here by the antiquarian Hilfeling and later broken up in the 19th century, was subsequently moved to the Swedish History Museum. Traces of early 14th-century stained glass, possibly by the so-called Lye Master, survive in a window of the bell chamber. The church was restored in 1955 to designs by the architect Olle Karth, at which time a new organ was also installed.