Vittskövle Church is a church in Kristianstad Municipality

Kristianstad Municipality

Kristianstad Municipality is a municipality in Skåne County in southernmost Sweden. Its seat is located in the city Kristianstad....

, in Skåne, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. It is part of the Diocese of Lund

Diocese of Lund

-External links:* from Nordisk Familjebok, in Swedish...

.

The church was originally built during the 12th or 13th century. In the 15th century a chapel

Chapel

A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...

 was built in the north. The chapel was dedicated to Saint Anne

Saint Anne

Saint Hanna of David's house and line, was the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ according to Christian and Islamic tradition. English Anne is derived from Greek rendering of her Hebrew name Hannah...

.

The vaults were built in the 15th century with mural painting

Church frescos in Denmark

Church frescos or church wall paintings are to be found in some 600 churches across Denmark, no doubt representing the highest concentration of surviving church murals anywhere in the world. Most of them date back to the Middle Ages...

s from the 1480s, showing stories from Genesis. These were later painted over, but again restored in the 20th century.

In the chancel

Chancel

In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar in the sanctuary at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building...

, the legend of Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas , also called Nikolaos of Myra, was a historic 4th-century saint and Greek Bishop of Myra . Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker...

 has been depicted. In Saint Annes chapel there are the symbols of the evangelists, as well as the four female medieval saints: Saint Barbara

Saint Barbara

Saint Barbara, , Feast Day December 4, known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian saint and martyr....

, Saint Ursula

Saint Ursula

Saint Ursula is a British Christian saint. Her feast day in the extraordinary form calendar of the Catholic Church is October 21...

, Saint Gertrude

Gertrude of Nivelles

Saint Gertrude of Nivelles was abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Nivelles, in present-day Belgium.She was a daughter of Pepin I of Landen and Saint Itta, and a younger sister of Saint Begga, Abbess of Andenne, Saint Bavo and Grimoald I.One day, when she was about ten years of age, her father...

 and Saint Catherine

Catherine of Alexandria

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, also known as Saint Catherine of the Wheel and The Great Martyr Saint Catherine is, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the pagan emperor Maxentius...

.

The tower was built in the 16th century.

In the 17th century a grave chapel was built for the Barnekow

Barnekow

Barnekow is an Old Danish noble family name, originally from Rügen. The line later split in a Swedish and Danish branch, when Scania became Swedish, following the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658....

 family in the south.

The baptismal font

Baptismal font

A baptismal font is an article of church furniture or a fixture used for the baptism of children and adults.-Aspersion and affusion fonts:...

is medieval.