Partille kyrka

The church has a single nave, built of grey stone that has been rendered and limewashed white, with a tiled roof. It has no bell tower of its own; instead a wooden bell frame from 1825 stands just outside, housing a smaller bell dated 1653 and a larger one from 1725, said to incorporate a weathervane from an earlier 1652 frame.

The building probably dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century, possibly raised on the site of an earlier timber church, though no documents confirm an exact year. The parish itself is first recorded in writing in 1392. The medieval chancel and east gable were pulled down in the mid-eighteenth century to make way for the present nave, and a sacristy was added at the east end in 1769.

The church porch seen today, built in 1855, replaced an earlier one on the same spot and was designed by Herman Schmidt of the nearby Partille manor house. Because of the church's closeness to the Säveån, this eastern extension soon began to subside, and there was serious talk of demolishing the whole building and constructing a new church elsewhere. A fundraising effort instead paid for repairs, and the older structure survived. Recurring ground movement has continued to require repairs over the years, including a thorough restoration in 1936 that saw both the exterior and interior repainted.later. During the twentieth century the sacristy was refitted and the porch was divided to create a lavatory and a new stair to the organ loft.

Inside, a barrel-vaulted ceiling and a gallery running along the west end and much of the north side give the church its character; the gallery front is decorated with painted images of the apostles. Notable furnishings include a richly ornamented wooden altar with a German Baroque altarpiece donated in 1691 by Conrad von Braunjohan, then owner of Partille manor, a wooden font given in 1690, and a pulpit dated 1702. A small memorial painting on the chancel's north wall, showing a ship and commemorating an eighteenth-century naval officer, is the church's only surviving epitaph. A piscina, a rare surviving medieval detail, is built into the wall behind the altar.

The church's organ has a layered history: a wooden case dates from a 1936 instrument, though the mechanism was rebuilt in 1973 while retaining some earlier pipework.