Ludgo kyrka

The church's origins lie in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, when an unusually large church for the area was built here. Some have suggested it may once have served as a district church, and the parish name itself, recorded in medieval form as Liuthgutawi, has been interpreted as referring to a local deity and a 'sacred place', raising the possibility that the site was chosen for its pre-Christian significance, a pattern seen at other Swedish churches such as Frösö. A papal indulgence letter of 1391 records that the church was dedicated to John the Baptist and the Holy Cross, feast days once marked here with particular solemnity.

Surviving medieval furnishings include fine continental sandstone sculptures of John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, along with a wooden Madonna and Child on the reconstructed Maria altar, and fragments of a medieval altar cabinet kept in the sacristy. Two carved oak panels, showing the Lamb of God and a pelican feeding its young, are said in one account to have been a gift from an English queen; while this cannot be confirmed, Filippa of England, consort of Erik of Pomerania, is known to have spent considerable time in Sweden and to have been a generous patron of religious houses, so the tradition is plausible rather than proven. The church's early font, of thirteenth-century Gotland limestone according to one source, stands near the Maria altar.

A major rebuilding took place in the 1670s, funded by the two leading local families, the Silfverstiernas of Ludgonäs and the Drakenhielms of Öster Malma. This gave the church its present cruciform east end, with a burial chapel for each family flanking a three-sided sacristy, all crowned by a small tower, while a new west tower replaced an earlier freestanding bell tower. Portraits of both families survive in the church, and the Drakenhielm chapel houses a rare and poignant relic: the uniform of the young lieutenant Carl Wilhelm Drakenhielm, killed at Fredriksten fortress in 1718, one of only a handful of surviving uniforms from Charles XII's Caroleans.

The imposing altarpiece, attributed to sculptor Burchard Precht and dating from around 1690, dominates the interior, flanked by baroque figures personifying virtues, with a pulpit of similar date. Coats of arms on the organ gallery are thought to derive from donor arms originally placed on the pulpit. The church has had several organs over the centuries; the present instrument dates from 1948.