S:t Olai kyrka

According to tradition, a medieval church stood roughly on this spot, though firm evidence is lacking; an eighteenth-century account suggests it may have stood slightly south of today's church, and it is possible this early building was destroyed during the wars of 1567. Its successor was begun in 1614 with support said to have come from Gustav II Adolf and the dowager queen Kristina, though plague and lack of money delayed its consecration until 1626. Built in a Gothic style with pointed windows and stepped gables, it suffered badly in the great town fire of 1655, and again when Russian forces burned Norrköping in 1719, destroying the interior though the church silver and textiles were saved.

By the early 1760s the building was so dilapidated that demolition, rather than further repair, was decided upon. Work began in 1766, and the present church was built on the foundations of its predecessor, retaining the same ground plan and dimensions. The architect was Carl Johan Cronstedt, though economic constraints forced some simplification of his original designs. The church was consecrated in December 1767 by the Bishop of Linköping. Its barque-style facade, with dark pilaster strips against paler render, and the freestanding bell tower erected in the 1750s, remain recognisable features of the townscape today.

The interior has been reworked more than once. A major renovation in 1870 stripped out most of the original fittings, apart from the pulpit and organ case, and introduced Baroque-style decorative painting and stucco. A further restoration between 1945 and 1949, prompted by serious damage to the roof structure, removed much of that decorative scheme and reinstated Pehr Hörberg's altarpiece of the Last Supper, painted in the 1790s and still in place today.

Among the church's furnishings is a pulpit of 1798 by the Norrköping sculptor Carl Fredrik Beurling, above which the Hebrew letters for the divine name JHWH are inscribed on the wall—a motif repeated in the pediment above the main entrance. Surviving textiles include a red velvet cope from the early sixteenth century and another in Spanish brocade, both thought to have arrived in Norrköping as war booty during the seventeenth century. A bronze statue of St Olof by the sculptor John Lundqvist, and stained-glass windows added in the early 1960s, are among the more recent additions.

The freestanding bell tower, rebuilt after a further town fire in 1822 destroyed its predecessor, now houses three bells cast in the 1820s. Gustav IV Adolf and Queen Fredrika are recorded as having been crowned in the church in 1800, a rare royal association for a Swedish parish church of this kind.