Bällefors kyrka

The church likely stands on the site of an earlier medieval timber church. Sources agree the surviving stone building was constructed in the thirteenth century, though descriptions of the medieval parish landscape suggest a more complex history: the area once contained several smaller medieval parishes, including one at Tiberg, which was absorbed into Bällefors in the mid-1700s. A memorial stone and large wooden cross today mark the site of Tiberg's former church, and open-air services are said to have sometimes been held there in summer.

The building was altered substantially over time. In 1666 the church was extended eastward with a three-sided chancel, a sacristy was added north of the chancel in 1708, and in 1766 the church was lengthened westward, when the timber gable tower was built. The nave is said to have been widened to the north in 1825.

Among the furnishings, the font is the oldest object in the church, though the two sources differ on its date: one describes it as thirteenth-century, the other as dating from the mid-1100s. A striking altarpiece was donated in 1629 by Claes Christersson, then owner of nearby Ryholm, and his wife Sigrid Oxenstierna, and it remains in the church today. The current altar painting itself is later, from 1910, a copy of a work in Hörup church in Skåne depicting Christ as comforter.

The pulpit dates from 1702 and is attributed to a carver working for Erik Sparre, reportedly paid 35 daler for the work; it was painted in 1719. Ceiling paintings added in 1729 were unfortunately lost during nineteenth-century restoration. An older, white-painted pulpit from the 1800s is said to be preserved in the tower.

In the late seventeenth century the church's status as the district's leading place of worship was reinforced when the Gyllengrip family of Magderud and the Rolshausen family of Ryholm chose it as their burial church, hanging ornate coats of arms inside that still lend the interior a flavour of Sweden's Age of Greatness. The church also holds a set of communion vessels, including a paten, made in Poland in 1526, and a late-medieval bell without inscriptions.