Knäreds kyrka

A medieval church stood near the old rectory, about 300 metres from today's building, from the 13th century until it was demolished in stages in the mid-19th century. Excavations in 1930 uncovered its foundations along with around 110 old coins, the earliest dating from about 1300, and a memorial to a local provost who had built a burial vault there.

A replacement church built in 1848–1849 met a dramatic end: shortly after the bells were rung for the very first planned service, the newly built tower collapsed onto the nave, splitting the walls apart. The disaster was widely reported across Sweden at the time, and whether it was caused by poor workmanship or faulty plans was never established.

The present church was built in 1853 from whitewashed rubble stone to designs by Hans Jakob Strömberg, in a neoclassical style with Romanesque and Gothic-influenced exterior details, and was consecrated in 1854. It has a rectangular nave, a semicircular sacristy to the east and a west tower. Restoration work in the 1950s repainted the interior and added a fresco of Christ's Ascension by the artist Pär Siegård, together with a stone font by sculptor Erik Nilsson. Further exterior renovation in the 1970s replaced the roof covering with copper while retaining the 1950s colour scheme.

Several notable furnishings survive from the older churches. A medieval altarpiece depicting the Crucifixion, with the apostle John and three mourning women at the foot of the cross, was reacquired in 1821. A wooden crucifix dates from 1752, and a locked church chest from 1750 has three locks in line with 17th-century church law. The pulpit, carved in 1853, features a baldachin decorated with the Hebrew tetragrammaton.

The tower holds two older bells. The larger bell was cast in Knäred in 1643, cracked during vigorous ringing in 1724, and was recast in 1744 in Malmö; it carries a Latin inscription. The smaller bell, only 64 cm high, was cast in Lübeck in 1595 and bears an inscription in Low German and Latin recording its donation to a church in Finland; a Finnish parish reportedly laid claim to it around 1930, but it remained in Knäred, and how it came to Sweden is unknown.

The current organ, built in 1965, retains the outer case from an 1876 instrument by E. A. Setterquist & Son, itself a successor to earlier 18th- and 19th-century organs used in the medieval church.