Sweden Guide
The southwest
St Maria kyrka
The St Maria kyrka is a handsome centrepiece in town, with additions from nearly every century since it was begun in the thirteenth. In the 1880s, changing tastes saw many of the church's rich decorative features removed, and only the most interesting ones were returned during a restoration programme forty years later. Inside, the early seventeenth-century Baroque pulpit is worth a look for the fearsome face carved beneath it and, opposite, the somewhat chilling medieval crucifix, which was placed here on the orders of Karl XII to remind the preacher of Christ's suffering.