Sankta Maria was the Germans’ church. Merchants trading into Visby paid levies towards a stone church from the second half of the 12th century, and it was consecrated on 27 July 1225 by Bishop Bengt of Linköping. It began as a Romanesque basilica, was rebuilt as a hall church in the middle of the 13th century by pulling the transepts into the nave, gained a large chapel about fifty years after that, and received Gothic tracery windows piecemeal through the 14th century. The west tower was heightened in 1423.
Then the town’s decline took the rest of Visby’s churches with it. Every other medieval parish church inside the ring wall lost its roof and stands open to the sky. St Mary’s did not, because after the Reformation it was the one kept in use, and in 1572 it was raised to be the cathedral of the new diocese of Visby. It is a stranger experience than it sounds: you spend a day walking through roofless naves with grass floors, and then you step into the one building that was allowed to keep its ceiling.
What to look for inside: the oak tabernacle of the mid-13th century; the wooden figure of the risen Christ in the rood, also 13th-century; the carved pulpit of 1684, the gift of Johan Wolters, a German trader who became the town’s mayor; and the Hanseatic chest that the parish says has been kept here for close to eight hundred years. From outside — and from the ferry — the shape to know is the three towers: one square tower at the west end and two slimmer ones at the east.
Entry is free. The parish runs guided tours in Swedish and English, including one that goes up into the roof space above the vaults, arranged through the cathedral office. In early August the building becomes a Medieval Week venue for concerts, processions and services, and normal opening hours stop applying.
