City wall of Visby

Visby City Wall (Swedish: Visby ringmur, "Visby Ring Wall", sometimes Visby stadsmur, "Visby City Wall") is a medieval defensive wall surrounding the Swedish town of Visby on the island of Gotland. As the strongest, most extensive, and best preserved medieval city wall in Scandinavia, the wall forms an important and integral part of Visby World Heritage Site.

Built in two stages during the 13th and 14th century, approximately 3.44 km (2.14 mi) of its original 3.6 km (2.2 mi) still stands. Of the 29 large and 22 smaller towers, 27 large and 9 small remain. A number of houses that predate the wall were incorporated within it during one of the two phases of construction. During the 18th century, fortifications were added to the wall in several places and some of the towers rebuilt to accommodate cannons.

Text adapted from “Visby City Wall” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

City wall of Visby ranks #4 of 6,412 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #1 of the 196 mapped in Sweden. Founded 1300, it is older than 66% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 555 atlas entries founded in the 13th century. See how Sweden compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗