Litslena kyrka

The church began as a small stone building raised in the Romanesque style during the twelfth century, dedicated to John the Baptist. Traces of this original grey-stone masonry survive in the north-western corner of the nave, a tangible link to the church's earliest phase.

Around 1300 the building was enlarged eastwards and southwards, replacing the rounded Romanesque chancel with a squared-off one, and a sacristy was added. Brick vaulting was inserted into the nave ceiling during the first half of the fifteenth century, and a porch was built around the same period. A tower was also added in medieval times, topped with a tall spire, though this proved unstable: it collapsed around 1690, was rebuilt, and then was blown down again in a severe storm in 1741. Ruined remains of the tower can still be seen against the church's west wall.

A serious fire in 1880 destroyed the roof and brought down the porch vaulting, though the other vaults withstood the heat. The subsequent restoration gave the porch a new timber ceiling and the church a new metal-clad roof, with the nave walls raised slightly beforehand. The building was reconsecrated in 1882. Later work in the twentieth century included the uncovering, in 1948, of fifteenth-century wall paintings that had been whitewashed over since an 1838 restoration; they are noted for their unusually well-preserved colours.

Among the church's furnishings is a font carved from Uppland sandstone, dating from the twelfth century and considered the oldest surviving item inside. The altar cabinet, a Marian shrine made around 1480 in Lübeck, depicts the Virgin and Child surrounded by musical angels. A triumphal crucifix from the mid-fifteenth century hangs in the chancel arch; another, from the later fifteenth century, was long kept in the bell tower but is now held at the Historical Museum. The pulpit was made by the joiner Magnus Granlund and installed in 1763.

On a small rise east of the church stands a separate bell tower, or klockstapel, erected in 1773 after the earlier church tower blew down. It holds two bells: the larger bears the date 1701 and appears to have survived the tower's collapse, while the smaller bell, once dated 1527, was apparently damaged and was recast in 1745. The churchyard's western gateway also dates partly from medieval times, rebuilt in the eighteenth century, while the eastern gateway was built in the seventeenth century.