Östra Torsås kyrka

The present church was built between 1845 and 1849 to designs by Jacob Wilhelm Gerss of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Buildings, replacing a medieval stone church that stood nearby and had itself succeeded an earlier timber building. As the new church neared completion, the old one was demolished so its materials could be used to finish the replacement. The first service in the new building is said to have taken place at Christmas 1848, and the church was formally consecrated in 1852 by Bishop Christopher Isac Heurlin, successor to the poet-bishop Esaias Tegnér.

Built of roughcast, whitewashed stone in an austere Empire style, the church has a rectangular nave with a straight-ended chancel and an attached sacristy. Its tower, unusually, stands to the south rather than the traditional west, with the chancel facing north instead of east — a departure from convention that was common in the 1800s, when practical siting often took precedence over older traditions. Tall round-arched windows fill the barrel-vaulted interior with light.

The church is sometimes referred to as a "Tegnér church", a nod to its association with Esaias Tegnér, bishop of Växjö at the time building was planned. Traces in the churchyard mark the site of the earlier Romanesque church, thought to date from the 1300s, itself possibly preceded by a still older church going back as far as the 11th century.

The altarpiece, depicting the Resurrection, is a copy made in 1878 by Ludvig Frid after a painting by Fredric Westin in Kungsholm Church, Stockholm. It replaced the original plain gilded cross that had served as the altar ornament. Further decorative painting and ceiling decoration were added during a renovation in 1896. Furnishings including the pulpit, font, and box pews largely date from the church's construction in the 1840s, while several older items — a processional crucifix, memorial tablets and funerary hatchments — were brought over from the demolished medieval church.

The organ case dates from 1868, built by Carl August Johansson of Hovmantorp, though the mechanism behind it was renewed in 1973 by the Gothenburg organ builder Olof Hammarberg.