Vreta Kloster Church

With a vast view over the Östgöta plain at the entrance to Bergs locks and the Göta canal, lies Vreta Kloster Church. The church is one of the country’s most interesting medieval buildings, erected by the Stenkil dynasty as a royal church in the early 1100s.

In the early 1100s, King Inge the Elder and his wife Helena donated the land at Vreta to a monastery, the first in Sweden. King Johan III had a grave monument made in the late 1500s. The monastery was dissolved only after the last nuns died in the 1580s.

Today, the monastery church is surrounded by the ruins of the monastery building and the monastery house that was the nuns’ granary and has now been renovated and is part of the church village’s visitor center. In 2019, 70 Christian graves were also found outside the cemetery. 19 of them were examined and it was then seen that four did not come from the local area but from Gotland, Skåne, northern Germany, and southeastern England. Post holes were also found indicating that a stave church existed northeast of this burial site.

The fantastic history, the tranquility, and the beautiful nature around attract many visitors here annually. Guided tours are conducted by the association Klosterliv in Vreta, here you can read more about them.