Jäders kyrka

The building has a complicated history. Parts of the north wall date from a Romanesque 12th-century church, which was widened and lengthened between about 1250 and 1300 into a hall church. A tower was added and the church vaulted during the 15th century. The most dramatic transformation came in the 1640s and 1650s, when Axel Oxenstierna rebuilt the church in stages to designs attributed to Nicodemus Tessin the Elder, one of his earliest known works in Sweden. A new chancel was built in 1641–1643, a sacristy and porch followed in 1651–1652, and in 1659 the Brahe family added their own burial chapel to the south, mirroring the sacristy and giving the church its cross-shaped plan. The elaborate sandstone gable ornament and sculpted portals from this period are the work of Heinrich Wilhelm. The tower's spire, in several tiers, was designed by the 19th-century architect Helgo Zettervall and erected in 1880.

Beneath the whitewashed, vaulted interior lie several burial vaults, including the Oxenstiernska vault, where Axel Oxenstierna himself is buried, and the Brahe family vault. The walls carry a large number of funerary hatchments (epitaphs), painted armorial panels once carried in noble funeral processions before being hung in the church as memorials.

Among the church's treasures is a magnificent altarpiece, a Brussels retable produced around 1514 in the workshop of Jan Borman, with painted panels attributed to Jan II van Coninxlo. It had previously belonged to Storkyrkan in Stockholm before Axel Oxenstierna acquired it in 1655; it is considered one of the finest surviving Brussels altarpieces in Sweden. Other notable furnishings include a bronze font basin from 1533, resting on a 13th-century limestone base, and a pulpit dating from 1654.

A smaller, more personal relic recalls a dramatic moment in the church's history: fragments of a hat belonging to a man reportedly killed by a lightning strike in the church at the end of the 17th century are said to survive, inscribed with a brief pious warning about divine thunder.

The church has had a succession of organs, the earliest recorded from 1697, later rebuilt and enlarged more than once, with the current instrument dating from 1937 and incorporating the earlier 1866 façade.