Leksand

The church stands high on the point where the Österdalälven flows out of Siljan, and for centuries the villages around the lake came to it by water, rowing to Sunday service in long church boats and landing on the sandy slope below the churchyard, where each village kept its own church hut beside the market green. The church grew with its parish, and storm and lightning kept reshaping it. Around 1425–1450 it received the first tall tower in Dalarna, which a storm threw down in 1573 and lightning set ablaze in 1627; the spire raised in 1641, some 83 metres high, was the tallest in the province. When lightning struck again in 1709, the west tower gave way to an onion dome in the middle of the roof. Local tradition credited it to prisoners home from Russia, but its model was the Swedish Baroque.