Svärta kyrka

The church has been altered repeatedly over the centuries, with building work recorded in the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s and 1800s. Of the original cross-shaped medieval church, only the north wall of the sacristy and the west gable survive; the tower was added in the 1400s. A major rebuilding in 1689 relocated the porch into the base of the tower and widened the church, while a further reconstruction in 1802 saw most of the medieval building demolished and replaced, leaving only the tower untouched, and adding a new rounded chancel to the east.

The tower itself is said to have once had a different colour: a note from 1688 records the purchase of red paint to restore its appearance. Plans for a new tower superstructure were drawn up in the 1860s by the architect Adrian Crispin Peterson, though these were apparently never carried out.

Among the church's furnishings, the pulpit is attributed to the master carpenter Hans Behm and dated to the 1640s; it originally stood elsewhere in the nave before being moved, with a spiral-turned column added beneath it during a restoration in 1873. The altarpiece, depicting the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, was painted by Pehr Hörberg in 1807. The font was carved in 1932 to a design by the architect Arre Essén, though the base of an earlier font, thought to be Gotlandic work from the 1200s, survives beneath the pulpit's supporting pillar. The three church bells were gifts from various owners of the nearby Sjösa estate, one dating back to 1656.

The church once held a rich collection of textiles, much of which is now kept at the Swedish History Museum, including a medieval cope with notably fine embroidery. Surviving items in the church include an embroidered antependium linked to the Stålarm family of Sjösa, dated 1702, and a well-preserved copy of the Bible printed in 1703 during the reign of Charles XII. Several older brass and pewter candlesticks and chandeliers, some dating from the 1600s, were gifts from local benefactors over the centuries.

A carved gravestone set into the chancel wall commemorates a sixteenth-century couple, Jon Karleson of Mem in Östergötland, who died at the Battle of Norrby in 1568, and his wife Agneta Arentsdotter of Sjösa. The church's organ, built in 1862 by Per Larsson Åkerman and later extended, remains the church's first and only organ. The most recent restoration, carried out in 2009–2010, saw the removal of the side aisle's pews and four rows of pews in the nave.