Västerås-Barkarö kyrka

The stone church was built in the late 1100s or early 1200s on the site of an earlier, possibly wooden, building. It began as a simple Romanesque hall with a narrower chancel and a west tower, the bells at first hanging in a separate wooden bell-frame in the churchyard. In the early 1300s the nave was lengthened eastward and given a new, wider chancel, and a vaulted sacristy was added. A porch followed in the 1400s, along with star and cross vaults replacing the earlier timber ceilings.

After the Reformation the building fell into serious disrepair; by the mid-1600s its walls and windows were failing and the floor had become a trampled earthen surface. Repairs began in 1649, followed by further rebuilding after storm damage in 1678. Between 1765 and 1769 the church was substantially enlarged to designs associated with the royal architect Carl Johan Cronstedt, whose family had local connections; the old tower was demolished, the nave extended westward, and a new tower built.

Disaster struck in April 1771, when a fire that swept through the village also destroyed the church roof, the new tower and all three bells, though much of the interior, including the pulpit, was saved. The church was subsequently restored under the direction of a member of the Cronstedt family. Further changes followed in the 1800s and 1900s, including a mid-19th-century restoration that removed the medieval porch and altered the windows, and a major 1947 restoration that reworked the colour scheme and reinstated enclosed pews. Excavation work in 1978 uncovered an old wine cellar beneath the chancel, thought to have occupied an even older burial chamber, along with the foundations of a medieval altar.

The church today is a single-naved building with a straight-ended chancel, a north sacristy and small rounded stair turrets, its ochre-coloured rendered walls pierced by round-arched windows. Inside, brick vaulting covers the nave and chancel, and the east window above the stone altar contains striking 1925 stained glass by Yngve Lundström, arranged in symbolic panels. The pulpit, in an early Baroque style, dates from the early 1660s.

The church's most debated possession was a bell said, by its inscription, to date from 1091, which would have made it one of the oldest dated church bells in Sweden, or even the world. It melted in the 1771 fire; the metal was recast into two new bells, one of which still carries the old inscription in modern form. Scholars have long questioned the claim, suggesting the date may have been misread or miscopied, though most agree the original bell was genuinely old. A north-wall painting, possibly a copy of an early 1600s work by the Flemish artist Marten Pepyn, and a relocated memorial panel to the von Schinkel family of Tidö Castle add further layers of history to the interior.