The medieval city fortifications of Visby are one of the landmarks of the former Hanseatic city of Visby on the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland.
The city wall was built from the middle of the 13th century to protect the medieval trading city and is about three and a half kilometers long. Thanks to renovation work in the 19th century, it is now one of the best and most completely preserved city fortifications in Europe. In Scandinavia, only Kalmar and Stockholm still had city fortifications. The construction of the complex with the three associated city gates (Söderport, Österport and Norderport) and the gates required in particular towards the harbor took about a hundred years. The wall was initially six meters high and had 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 of up to three parallel ditches and a rampart enabled the best possible protection according to medieval ideas. Two caponiers were built in the 16th century. Until the 18th century, the defense system was continually adapted to the changing possibilities of warfare and the weapons available for it.