Kristianopels kyrka

The town's first church was built in 1600, but it was destroyed by the Swedish army in 1611 during a midsummer attack led by the future Gustav II Adolf. Its replacement, begun in 1618 under the Danish crown, was built using limestone and granite brought from Öland and brick from Nättraby, and it entered use in 1624 even before construction was fully complete.

The building is a fine example of Nordic Renaissance style, with a stepped-gable tower rising above the northern transept. Its plan resembles the Church of the Holy Trinity in Kristianstad, both following the broad-naved German hall-church type with transept-like arms to north and south. Because the town street ran alongside the building's angled gable, the tower was placed to the north rather than in a more conventional position, and the nave itself is slightly parallelogram-shaped to fit the old street layout.

Inside, the church retains a flat, beamed wooden ceiling from 1792 and a chancel wall, decorated by Johan Eneberg, added in 1838. The altarpiece, dating from the church's consecration in 1624, is arranged in three tiers depicting the Resurrection, the Institution of the Last Supper flanked by Moses and John the Baptist, and inscribed texts below, all crowned by an angel bearing a cross.

Several distinctive furnishings survive from the seventeenth century, including a pulpit of 1621 with figures of the four evangelists, its octagonal sounding-board added later in 1787, and a screen near the pulpit stair dating from 1647. A sixteenth-century chandelier, said to have hung originally in the earlier St Peter's church at Avaskär, and a royal pew of 1635 bearing Christian IV's monogram, later joined by those of Swedish kings Gustaf VI Adolf and Carl XVI Gustaf, are among the more evocative objects. The font, of green marble and Öland limestone, dates from 1633.

Two votive ships hang in the transepts: the Polstjärnan, placed in the south transept in 1963, and a model of the warship Gustav III, donated in 1979 and displayed in a glass case in the north transept. The current organ, built in 1979 by the Hammarberg workshop in Gothenburg, replaced an 1897 instrument whose façade was retained; an earlier five-stop positive organ, recorded in 1647, was moved to Karlskrona when Kristianopel lost its town privileges.