Fasterna kyrka

The present church dates from 1806, but its origins go back to the Middle Ages. Two old parishes, Fasta and Esterna, were combined in 1797 as the growth of the nearby Rånäs ironworks made the existing medieval churches too small and dilapidated. A new shared church was built on the foundations of the old Esterna church, incorporating some of its medieval stone walls in what is now the western cross-arm. Once the new building was complete, the old Fasta church was demolished and left as a ruin; a bell-tower built in 1908 for Rånäs chapel now stands on its former site.

Designed in a neoclassical style, reputedly inspired by Adolf Fredriks kyrka in Stockholm, the church is built as a large, equal-armed cross with a brick-and-timber domed tower above the crossing. The exterior walls are roughcast and painted yellow and white, with hipped, metal-clad roofs over the cross-arms and a copper-clad cupola on the tower. Inside, whitewashed timber vaults cover the nave, with a form of groin vault at the crossing and barrel vaults over the arms; round-arched windows let in plenty of light. Beneath the choir lies a seventeenth-century burial vault built for the Oxenstierna family of nearby Mörby Castle, and it is thought that some of the church's building material was taken from the abandoned castle after its decline.

The interior fittings largely date from the early nineteenth century and have changed little since, including the pews, pulpit and galleries built at the same time as the church. A renovation in 1938, led by architect Ärland Noreen, made some seating more comfortable and coincided with an enlargement of the organ, originally built by P.Z. Strand in 1834.

Among the church's older treasures are a medieval font combining a stone base with a later shell-shaped basin, a fifteenth-century altar cabinet, a fourteenth-century crucifix, and a red velvet cope from the sixteenth century. The main altarpiece, added in 1844, features an oil painting of Christ in Gethsemane by professor Fredric Westin, set within a carved and gilded frame. Two communion vessels also have notable histories: a large gilded set made in Stockholm in 1811, and an older German-made silver vessel presented to the church in 1938. An eighteenth-century tiled stove survives in the sacristy.