Ventlinge kyrka

The earliest church here was a small, tower-less Romanesque building with a nave, chancel and apse, put up in the first half of the twelfth century. Around 1200 a sturdy defensive tower was added on its own foundations, complete with vaulted chambers and a stair whose steps were deliberately made triangular to trip up intruders. A shaft above the stairway entrance allowed defenders on the tower's second floor to drop stones on unwelcome visitors — a reminder of more troubled times on this stretch of coast.

Inside the medieval nave, limestone flooring and side benches once led up a few steps to the chancel and altar in the apse, flanked by side altars dedicated to Saint Lars and the Virgin Mary, separated from the nave by a chancel screen. On the north wall, beneath where the gallery now stands, a fifteenth-century wall painting depicts a late-medieval ship with a figure on its afterdeck — possibly a reference to the legendary voyage of Saint Olaf, though this remains uncertain.

In 1812 the medieval chancel and apse were demolished and the nave extended eastward, with a new sacristy added on the east side; the old medieval floor was covered over. A porch was built onto the south façade, and the tower soon after gained its distinctive lantern top. The church took on the character of a plain preaching hall, fitted with a combined altar and pulpit in the taste of the period, the pulpit itself carved in 1870 by the joiner N. J. Jonsson of Glömminge.

Two finely carved stone slabs from the thirteenth or fourteenth century survive, one built into the east gable and the other kept in the tower loft; these may once have formed part of grave monuments. The church also holds an older altarpiece, thought to date from the 1740s and possibly the work of a painter named Eckhoff, though other sources attribute it instead to the joiner Anders Sylvester.

Following an eight-year restoration, the church reopened in Advent 2014. The nineteenth-century chancel was cleared to create space for singers, closed box pews were replaced with chairs, and a new stone altar was consecrated at its centre — recreating something of the medieval church's character within the framework of the 1812 rebuilding.