Järfälla kyrka

The earliest church, built at the end of the 1100s, was a modest structure only about 18 metres long, with unrendered grey stone walls, no windows to the north and a semicircular apse in the east. Light came from a few small round-arched windows high on the south wall, and a wooden screen divided the priests' chancel from the standing congregation in the nave. Little survives from this first building except the font, carved from sandstone, traditionally attributed to the Gotland stonemason known as Semi-Byzantinos and decorated with intertwined fabulous beasts.

A fire towards the end of the 1200s badly damaged the Romanesque church, prompting rebuilding in the newly fashionable Gothic style: the roof was raised, the nave lengthened, and brick rib vaults added to the chancel and a new sacristy. By 1303 the church was again in use. Further extensions through the 1400s, including a porch and a west portal, gave the building essentially its present form by around 1500. The south doorway's sturdy iron-fitted wooden door is thought to date from this period of rebuilding.

The interior was altered again in 1825, when window openings were enlarged or added and the chancel gable was given a round window whose lead glazing bars famously spell out that year. Restorations followed in 1927 and 1970, and the organ, built by Marcussen & Søn in 1962 and enlarged in 1970, underwent thorough conservation between 2019 and 2023.

Among the church's furnishings is a pulpit whose oldest parts date from the 1600s, substantially renovated in 1724 at the expense of Field Marshal Count Carl Gustaf Dücker, a local landowner; it is topped with a depiction of Christ in majesty with the four evangelists. The altarpiece, showing the risen Christ at Emmaus, is by an unknown painter and was installed during the 1825 restoration, replacing an earlier altar cabinet. A wooden figure of St Anne with the Virgin and Child, probably once part of that older altarpiece, now stands in a chancel niche.　The churchyard contains a striking stone pyramid, a burial chapel built in 1762 for a local landowning couple and reputedly inspired by the Pyramid of Cestius in Rome, with an unusual interior decorated with winged skulls.

According to local tradition, the notorious thief and impostor known as Lasse-Maja is said to have stolen the church silver in 1812 together with two accomplices, an episode still recounted as part of the church's story, though details rest on popular tradition rather than firm documentation.