Ottarps kyrka

According to old local legend, trolls and giants were said to have had a hand in choosing this particular site for the church. In reality, it was built in the late 1100s or early 1200s as a Romanesque parish church, with a nave, a narrower and lower chancel, and a semicircular apse, most likely constructed of sandstone that may originally have been left bare before later being limewashed.

Over the medieval centuries the building was altered more than once: vaults were added to the chancel, the nave was extended westwards, and a tower was raised at the west end. A porch was built in front of a south doorway in the later Middle Ages, though this was removed, possibly towards the end of the eighteenth century, when the main entrance through the west tower is thought to have been created. The tower itself is notably plain, its heavy stone walls broken only by small, high-set window openings.

A major nineteenth-century remodelling, carried out in 1867 to designs by the architect Johan Fredrik Åbom, considerably changed the church's layout. The eastern part of the nave was demolished, two long transepts were added, and the altar was repositioned at their centre. The old chancel was converted into a sacristy by walling up the triumphal arch, and most of the eastern apse was pulled down at the same time.

A 1973 restoration uncovered fragments of fifteenth-century wall paintings hidden beneath later plaster in the chancel and the remains of the apse. These include part of a Majestas Domini composition showing Christ enthroned within a mandorla, surrounded by the four evangelists, of which only the figures of Matthew and John have survived, along with faint traces of what may once have depicted the apostles. It is thought the chancel's north and south walls were similarly decorated before the Reformation.

Among the church's furnishings is a medieval sandstone font with a square basin and corner mouldings, paired with a brass christening dish bearing a relief of the Annunciation, probably from the fifteenth century, and a rim inscribed with evangelist symbols dated 1587. The pulpit, dated 1624, is a richly carved and gilded example of early Baroque woodwork. The church has had several organs over the years, the earliest recorded in 1847, with the current mechanical instrument built in 1990 retaining an older organ case.