Visby city fortifications
The medieval city fortification Visby is one of the landmarks of the former Hanseatic city of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea .
The city wall was built from the middle of the 13th century to protect the medieval trading town and is around three and a half kilometers long. Due to renovation work in the 19th century, it is one of the best and most completely preserved city fortifications in Europe. In Scandinavia, only Kalmar and Stockholm had city fortifications. The construction of the facility with the three associated city gates (Söderport, Österport and Norderport) and the gates required in particular towards the port took around a hundred years to complete. The wall initially had a height of six meters and no other towers. Only later was the wall combined with 44 additional defense towers and raised to a height of up to eleven to twelve meters. The combination with up to three parallel trenches and a wall enabled the best possible protection according to medieval ideas. Two caponiers were erected in the 16th century . Up until the 18th century, the defense system was repeatedly adapted to the changed possibilities of warfare and the weapons available for this purpose.
When Visby was conquered by Lübeck in 1525, the Lübeck breach that still exists today was struck in part of the northern section of the city wall and the northern part of the old town was largely destroyed. The former Visborg fortress in the south-west of the city was included in the city wall.
literature
- Marita Jonsson, Sven-Olof Lindquist: Gotland cultural guide . Almqvist and Wiksell, Uppsala 1993, ISBN 91-88036-09-X .
- Ulrich Quack: Gotland: The largest island in the Baltic Sea. A Swedish province of particular charm. Culture, history, landscape. DuMont, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7701-2415-4 .
