Badelunda kyrka

The oldest parts of the church, the eastern half of the nave and sections of the chancel, are thought to date from the second half of the 1200s, though tree-ring dating of roof timbers suggests construction may have begun a little earlier, between 1228 and 1242. Excavations near the churchyard have uncovered traces of a farmstead and burial ground used in the 11th century, hinting that an earlier wooden church may have stood on or near the site before the stone building was raised.

The sacristy dates from the 1300s and the porch from the early 1400s, with the brick vaulting of the nave ceiling added later that century. Around 1650 the church took on much of its present form: Henrik Horn af Marienborg built a burial chapel on the south side of the chancel to house his own family and the remains of his father-in-law Arvid Wittenberg, previously buried in Riddarholmen Church in Stockholm—hence the chapel's name, the Horn-Wittenberg vault. Horn also funded a westward extension of the nave by ten metres, with a new star vault deliberately built to resemble the medieval original.

Further changes followed: larger windows were cut in the 1700s to improve light, and the crumbling bell tower was repaired rather than replaced as once planned. A more thorough remodelling in 1892 under architect C.G. Ekholm altered the chancel vault and enlarged windows, while a mid-20th-century restoration, partly guided by architects Ärland Noreen and Per Bohlin, sought to recover an older appearance, moving coffins from the burial chapel into a basement space and repainting the vaults white.

Among the church's most striking features are wall paintings discovered in the porch in 1912 but only uncovered and conserved in 1959–60. Some are dated to the 1540s and attributed to the painter Urian Olofson, whose signed and dated work is considered unusual for its time; others are thought to be earlier 15th-century work, possibly by Albertus Pictor, and include vivid depictions of angels, the instruments of Christ's Passion, and devils.

The church's oldest treasure is a triumphal crucifix carved in the Mälardalen region in the 1300s. After spending several decades stored in the attic, it was returned to its original position on the chancel arch in 1929. The burial chapel houses most of the church's twenty-one funerary coats of arms belonging to the Horn and Bååt families, while Baroque sculptures of Matthew and John, flanking the altar, were acquired in 1702 and may be the work of Kaspar Schröder or Burchard Precht.