Högby kyrka

The earliest church on this site is thought to have been built around the middle of the 1100s, a period when many churches were being raised across Öland. It originally consisted of a low Romanesque nave with a narrower chancel, possibly ending in an apse, and a west tower added slightly later. During the 1200s the chancel was rebuilt taller and wider than the nave, giving the building the silhouette of a twin-towered church even though no true eastern tower existed. A sacristy stood beside the chancel, and along the nave's south side ran an aisle-like structure incorporating a porch and a chapel known as St Otto's Chapel, which was demolished in 1797.

Inside, the medieval nave was arranged as a two-aisled hall church with six vaulted bays supported on two massive square pillars and a round pillar at the chancel arch. The floor was laid with limestone slabs and gravestones, reflecting centuries of use as a place of burial as well as worship.

By the 19th century the building was showing its age. A visitation in 1861 recorded it as being in tolerably acceptable condition inside and out, yet within a few years new plans were drawn up. Between 1870 and the early 1870s the medieval church was largely demolished, with only the tower retained, and a new nave in a neoclassical style was built to designs by F. R. Ekberg. The rebuilt church was consecrated on 15 October 1871, uniting the powerful medieval west tower with a spacious new nave of rendered limestone and a three-sided sacristy to the east.

Several furnishings were carried over from the earlier church. The altar, of wood painted to resemble green marble, is thought to bear decoration by Anders Georg Wadsten, while the altarpiece, carved by Anders Dahlström the younger in 1762, depicts the baptism of Christ flanked by figures of the apostles John and Paul. A triumphal crucifix from the 1500s, probably of North German workmanship, and two painted medieval cabinets—a St Peter shrine linked to Lübeck or Rostock work around 1460 and a Marian shrine of probable East German origin from the early 1400s—are among the more notable medieval survivals. The font, carved from red limestone in 1654, and a pulpit said to be the oldest on Öland, dating from 1596 and possibly made in Zealand, add further layers of history to the interior.

The church's organ has been renewed more than once: an 1879 instrument by Anders Victor Lundahl of Malmö was later replaced in 1958 by a new organ built by the Frederiksborg organ workshop, still in use today.