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Visby is a Medieval walled city, located on the Swedish island of Gotland, that houses roughly 40% of the Gotland population. The Old Town itself is in such an exceptional state that Visby was crowned a UNESCO World Heritage site back from 1995. And appropriately enough, the city hosts a Medieval Festival every year.
Visby is also called the City of Roses/Ruins, and its names comes from Old Norse of the words ‘Vis’ and ‘by’ meaning ‘place of sacrifices’ and ‘village’, respectively. The city can only be reached by flying directly into Visby airport or by taking the ferry from Nynäshamn or Öland.
Visby is highly populated during the warm summer months with two weeks in particular that people try to avoid to stay way from larger than normal crowds. These weeks are:
Almedalen Week - Usually week 26 - A forum for Swedish politics
Stockholm Week - Usually week 29 - One week of partying from Stockholmers
Nonetheless, the city is a wonderful place to spend a weekend to explore its ruins and history while enjoying the modern comforts of traveling with great food, bars, and cafes. It is great place to stay while also exploring the rest of Gotland, most easily by car, by bus is certainly possible as well. This blog post will highlight some of the great spots to see within Visby.
Even further, if you have lots of time in Sweden, I suggest checking out some of the other cities in the country. You can check out my blog posts on some of them below:
Stockholm (Blog Post Title: Why Stockholm is the best Scandinavian capital)
Stockholm Tunnelbana (Blog Post Title: The World’s Longest Art Gallery - Riding on the Stockholm Tunnelbana)
Gothenburg (Göteborg) (Blog Post Title: A Tour of Gothenburg: Sweden's 2nd Largest City)
Uppsala (Blog Post: Uppsala: the hidden gem just North of Stockholm)
Helsingborg (Blog Post: Just a few reasons to see Helsingborg in the South of Sweden)
Malmö (Blog Post: Take a weekend break in Malmö, Sweden)
Lund (Blog Post: A Day tour of the university town of Lund)
Kalmar (Blog Post: Kalmar: The town you should know more about in Sweden)
Öland (Blog Post: A Day Tour of the Swedish island of Öland)
Marstrand (Blog Post: A day trip to the Swedish island of Marstrand)