St Peter’s Church, Malmo

St Peter's Church, Malmo tickets: which one to buy

Entry is free, as at Swedish parish churches generally, with a donation box inside. There is no ticket for any part of the building and no guided tour service, though the parish arranges tours for groups by request. Malmo walking tours include the church and cost a moderate amount; the city centre is small and the church is two minutes from Stortorget, the main square, so no transport is involved.

Organ and choral concerts are held through the year and most are free or nearly so, funded by the Church of Sweden. Copenhagen is thirty-five minutes away by train across the Oresund bridge, which makes Malmo an easy half day from Denmark, and the church is the obvious first stop off the train. The parish publishes its concert programme on a board by the south door and most events are free to attend.

Visiting St Peter's Church, Malmo: what to see

St Peter's is the oldest building in Malmo, begun in the early fourteenth century when the town was Danish, and modelled on St Mary's in Lubeck, which is why a Swedish city has a north German brick Gothic basilica with a 105-metre tower. The Reformation reached Scania early and hard: in 1529 the interior was stripped and whitewashed, and the church became a centre of Lutheran preaching. One chapel escaped. The Kramarekapellet, the merchants' chapel off the north aisle, kept its medieval wall paintings under the limewash and they were uncovered in the nineteenth century: foliage, saints and domestic scenes in red and green across the vaults, the best late-medieval murals in southern Sweden.

The altarpiece of 1611, carved and gilded and seven metres high, is one of the largest in the Nordic countries, and the pulpit of 1599 stands opposite it. The tower was rebuilt after a collapse in 1442 and again in the nineteenth century, and its copper spire is the tallest structure in the old town. Brick piers carry the vaults in the north German manner, and a chapel on the south side holds a medieval font moved here from a demolished country church.

St Peter's Church, Malmo opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from mid-morning to late afternoon, with services on Sunday mornings and the church closing for weddings and funerals. Malmo is dark and cold from November to February, and the brick interior is chilly; summer days are long and the clerestory windows light the nave well. The Kramarekapellet is lit on a timer and the switch is by the entrance.

Dress is informal, as in any Swedish church. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow half an hour. Lilla Torg with its timber-framed houses and cafes is two minutes away, and the Malmohus castle with the city museum is a fifteen-minute walk west. Malmo's summer is short and the church square hosts a small market during it, which makes a visit easy to combine with lunch.