Stora Råby kyrka

The church lies in the village of Stora Råby, a few kilometres south-east of Lund's centre, now linked to the city by the newer Råbylund district. The name Råby is thought to derive from an old word for boundary or border land. The oldest parts of the building are the chancel and nave, raised in brick with granite footings during the 1200s, probably replacing an earlier wooden stave church on the same spot. A brick porch was added against the nave's south door in the 1400s, followed some time later by the tower; the vaults were also added towards the end of the medieval period.

The church was altered repeatedly in later centuries: the tower was rebuilt in 1770, windows were enlarged in 1773, and a slate sundial was mounted above the porch doorway in 1817. In 1843 Carl Georg Brunius added heavy buttresses to the west front to stabilise the tower. A thorough restoration led by Theodor Wåhlin in 1909 inserted a new west porch between Brunius's buttresses, converted the old porch into a sacristy, and uncovered a blocked medieval window in the east wall of the chancel — the only original window surviving. A further restoration in 1934, under Eiler Græbe, altered the pews, moved the parish chest, hung a calvary group near the tower doorway, and installed the stained-glass window behind the altar by the Helsingborg artist Hugo Gehlin.

Fragments of fifteenth-century wall paintings, possibly linked to the so-called Vittskövle group, were uncovered during the Wåhlin restoration on the north walls and near the triumphal arch. They depicted the medieval theme of the 'wheel of life' — birth, youth, adulthood, old age and death — but were judged too damaged to preserve and were limewashed over; they survive only through Wåhlin's photographs. One painting that was kept shows the so-called Throne of Mercy, depicting God holding the dying Christ, though the dove representing the Holy Spirit is barely visible and the image is partly hidden by a vault. Near the pulpit is a consecration cross said to date from the church's dedication, and the triumphal arch carries a red-and-white border thought to be original to the nave.

The sandstone font is dated to the 1200s, though accounts differ on its detail — one source describes a plain, smooth bowl, another a kettle-shaped hollow with a deep, funnel-like base and a possibly later foot. A wooden Madonna statue from Oberammergau in Bavaria stands beside the font; sources differ slightly on whether it was donated in the 1930s by a local clergyman or whether its arrival shaped the colour scheme used elsewhere in the church's fittings. The two church bells are of particular interest: the larger, cast in 1519, carries a Latin inscription ending with a dedication to Saint John the Baptist, while the smaller bell has been recast more than once, most recently in 1928.

The present organ was built in 1969 by A. Mårtenssons Orgelfabrik of Lund, replacing two earlier instruments, and is notable for an unusual cymbelstjärna, or 'cymbal star', a percussive stop rarely found in Swedish organs. A carved wooden relief of Henric Schartau, a noted cleric associated with the parish in the late 1700s and early 1800s, hangs in the church, made in 1937 by Henning Åkerman.