Virsbo kyrka

The church was built on the initiative of Herman Lagercrantz, owner of the Virsbo ironworks, and was consecrated by the bishop in August 1937. It stands at the end of the avenue leading to Virsbo manor house, echoing an old tradition at Walloon ironworks estates of placing the church so as to signal the authority of both church and works management. The building was constructed using timber and materials from the ironworks itself, under the direction of the works' own builder, with the foundation stones donated from a demolished neighbouring works. The interior design was drawn up by Lars Johan Lehming, while the exterior was designed by architect Erik Hahr, and the decorative painting inside was carried out by Axel Hörlin. The church remained in the ownership of the Virsbo works until 1976, when it passed to the parish, and it was extended to the north in the 1980s.

The most striking feature for visitors is the altarpiece and its surrounding altar structure, both dating from the mid-eighteenth century and said to have come from a castle chapel in Bohemia, purchased by Lagercrantz in Vienna. For many years the scene was believed to depict the Ascension of Christ, but closer inspection and conservation work in the early twenty-first century revealed painted figures on a bridge and in falling water, leading to the conclusion that the picture instead shows the martyrdom of the Bohemian priest John of Nepomuk, thrown into the Vltava river in Prague in the fourteenth century. Unusually for depictions of this saint, the painting lacks the star halo often shown around his head, adding a note of ongoing uncertainty about its exact iconography.

Other notable furnishings include a silver crucifix on the altar made in northern Italy in the seventeenth century, and a triumphal crucifix hanging above the boundary between chancel and nave, bought in Vienna though associated with the Bavarian village of Oberammergau and mounted on a pine cross made from local timber. The pulpit, in the form of a lectern-style ambo, was designed by Lehming and made by the works' own joiners, while the pews were produced at a nearby joinery. In the Lagercrantz family burial chapel hangs a small carved Baroque altarpiece from southern Germany, showing Moses raising the serpent, alongside an eagle-shaped ambo said to have been donated by a private individual in New York.

Outside the church stands a free-standing bell tower dating from the 1920s, occupying the site originally intended for the chancel before it was moved to accommodate the church building. According to local tradition the bell itself was designed by Prince Eugen and cast at the papal bell foundry in Rome, receiving a blessing from Pope Pius XI. The church organ, installed in the 1950s to replace an earlier harmonium, is a pneumatic instrument built by a Gothenburg organ workshop.