A day of walking in Visby among its rosebushes and church ruins. There are more roses than ruins in Visby, but the ruins were definitely more fun to look at and to photograph.

The first ruins we passed today didn’t look super exciting from the outside but had an invitingly open gate so why not. And while they weren’t super exciting, they were pretty nice, so we went inside the next ruins as well, and the ones after that, and then some more. And some of the later ruins turned out to be quite exciting indeed!

The churches were abandoned during the reformation, five hundred years ago, give or take. Just… deemed so worthless that they were abandoned. Not worth keeping dry, not worth tearing down. I guess there would have been beggars or vagrants living in them, maybe. And now they’re tourist sights.

Some are more broken down and overgrown with grass. Others have pillars and vaults still standing. In a few we found stairs inside the walls, and in one them a walkway high up circling most of the nave, still walkable all the way around.

I like vaults. And pillars, and towers, and walls thick enough to have stairs inside them. If I was filthy rich, I could totally imagine buying an old church to live in. I guess there might not be any available in Sweden, though. I wonder what it would cost to build a medieval-style stone church.


What I really liked about these ruins is how un-tourist-adapted they were. No handrails, no warning signs, no bars to keep you from falling (except where there were large openings where you could by accident literally walk off the edge). Wander at your own risk.

There are myriad rose bushes lining the streets in Visby old town. Hollyhocks, snapdragons and poppies also grow just about everywhere, even in pavement cracks.


By the way, Visby turned out to be quite empty of tourists. There are no hordes of Stockholmers filling the streets. This really was the best time to visit!