Hanseatic town of Visby

Visby is the town of Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea about 100 km east of the Swedish mainland. A Viking Age settlement grew up on a natural harbour sheltered by cliffs, and Gotlandic merchants used it as a trading base. By the 12th century the trade routes of the Baltic ran through the town.

After Lübeck was founded in 1143, German merchants arrived, and Visby became the main Baltic centre of the Hanseatic League. In the 13th century it grew from a seasonal trading post into a walled city, and German, Russian and Danish merchants built stone warehouses in rows running up from the harbour. The wall is about 3.4 km long, and inside it stood 15 churches, more than in any other Swedish town of the Middle Ages.

Plague around 1350 and the invasion of King Valdemar IV of Denmark in 1361 ended Visby's leading role; 1,800 Gotlanders are recorded as killed in battle before the town. Most churches were abandoned at the Reformation in the 1530s and fell into ruin, and only St Mary's Cathedral remained in use. Because the town declined, its medieval stone houses were not rebuilt, and more than 200 warehouses and merchants' houses still stand. Visby was inscribed in 1995.