Kila kyrka

The present church, completed in 1963 to designs by the architect Kurt von Schmalensee, is built of whitewashed brick with a copper roof. Inside, the floor is limestone and the ceiling grey-painted sheet material with exposed concrete beams — a distinctly mid-twentieth-century interior, replacing the previous eighteenth-century timber church, which had been demolished after severe damage by wood-boring beetles.

That eighteenth-century church had itself replaced a medieval stone church, whose ruins survive at Lundäng, roughly five kilometres east of the current building — a reminder of how many phases of worship have taken place in this small parish over the centuries.

A free-standing timber bell tower dating from 1768 still stands beside the church. It was fitted with a new large bell in 1962–63 to coincide with the building of the present church, and today holds three bells in total.

Among the furnishings, the granite altar was made from local stone, while the pulpit dates from the seventeenth century and is said to have already stood in the medieval twelfth-century church. The font is even older, dating from the thirteenth century, linking the modern building physically to its much older predecessors.

The most striking feature for visitors is the chancel wall, covered by a large gold mosaic — around 50 square metres — depicting the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem from the Book of Revelation. Created by the artist Bengt Olof Kälde and installed in 1967, it has attracted international attention as a significant piece of modern ecclesiastical art. Stained glass by Jan Brazda adds further colour to the interior.

The church also contains a pneumatic organ built in 1946 by Olof Hammarberg of Gothenburg, which replaced an earlier nineteenth-century instrument by Johan Lund of Stockholm.