Skånela kyrka

Built mainly of well-cut grey stone with a chancel base and triumphal arch of finely worked sandstone, the church is thought to have been designed by a German master mason connected to the building works at Lund Cathedral. Fragments of runestones are also built into the walls. One source, citing the former head of the Swedish National Heritage Board, Bengt Thordeman, describes it as among the finest medieval buildings raised in the Lake Mälaren region.

The church began as a single nave. A sacristy and north chapel were added in the 1300s, and in the following century a porch was built and the nave extended westward; the tower was also raised and vaults added. A fire in 1642 damaged the west and east gables, which were rebuilt with thicker walls, and buttresses were added to the west side in the 1720s. Around 1750 the Jennings family, then owners of nearby Skånelaholm Castle, added a burial chapel adjoining the medieval north chapel.

A further fire in 1806 destroyed the roof structure; the interior walls were subsequently covered with several layers of white plaster, obscuring the medieval stonework. Restoration completed in 1957 uncovered the twelfth-century masonry beneath the plaster and revealed wall paintings from three different periods, the earliest dating to the 1300s, returning the building to something closer to its Romanesque appearance. The 1957 works were reportedly completed under architect Rolf Bergh after the death of Erik Fant, who had drawn up the original restoration plans.

Among the church's furnishings is a wooden relief on the north chancel wall, believed to have come from an earlier altar cabinet, depicting Christ and the sleeping disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane and dated to the late 1400s. A carved limewood image of the Madonna, from around 1505, stands in a niche in the north chapel. The current font, of limestone on a sandstone base, was made in 1957 to a design by Bergh, replacing a medieval stone font that had been removed following a decision at a 1751 church visitation. The pulpit, painted white with gilded reliefs, dates from 1789.