Stargard's town walls — four gates, tall towers and a gate that stands in the river

What is left of the ring

Stargard walled itself in during the second half of the 13th century, replacing earlier earth-and-timber ramparts with field stone and brick. The ring enclosed the whole of the old town and, through the 15th and 16th centuries, counted as the strongest defensive system in Pomerania — raised, thickened and reworked for firearms, because Brandenburg was growing just across the border.

Then came the 19th century. The walls lost their purpose, the town needed room for a railway and factories, and more than half the circuit was pulled down. What survives runs for about a kilometre, broken in places but still readable as a circuit: follow it and you are back at your starting point inside an hour.

The oldest stretches are easiest to spot beside the Pyrzyce Gate (Brama Pyrzycka). Field stones laid in even courses and finished with brick reach some six metres there — the height of the wall before a brick upper storey was added. You can read the change of material from the pavement, with no sign to help you.

A gate standing in the water

The Mill Gate (Brama Młyńska), built in the middle of the 15th century, is reason enough for an afternoon here. Two towers rise on either side of the Ina channel and the water runs beneath the passage: this is a water gate — the only one left in Poland and one of two surviving in Europe. It guarded the approach from the river, the route by which goods moved towards the Szczecin Lagoon, and it sits at the lowest point of the circuit, some twenty metres below the highest sections of wall.

The other three gates survive as passages built into the modern street. The Pyrzyce Gate dates from the end of the 13th century and is often called the finest town gate in Pomerania. The Wall Gate (Brama Wałowa), also late 13th century, is the only one in Pomerania where Gothic meets Renaissance, and it carries a latrine oriel on its flank. The St John's Gate wears a neo-Gothic dress from the end of the 19th century — the very years when the rest of the wall was coming down.

Towers above the roofline

Two towers stand clear of everything around them. Red Sea (Morze Czerwone), raised around the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, is thirty-four metres tall and reckoned the largest town tower in Poland. Barely lower is the Weavers' Tower (Baszta Tkaczy, also called the Ice Tower) from the mid-15th century, at thirty-one metres. Beside them sit far humbler things: the thirteen-metre Prisoners' Tower and Białogłówka, whose square base turns into a cylinder further up.

In the 16th century some towers gained bastions — low, thick-walled emplacements for artillery. They show better than anything that this wall was never a single project but a structure rebuilt across three hundred years, each time for a different kind of weapon. The Archaeological and Historical Museum now occupies the bastion and the Pyrzyce Gate, so two points on the circuit can be seen from the inside as well.

Why the wall survived and the town did not

Stargard received Magdeburg town rights in 1243, Lübeck law followed at the end of the 13th century, and in 1363 the town joined the Hanseatic League; shipping down the Ina towards the Baltic was its main asset. None of that medieval strength shows in the street plan today. In March 1945 more than seventy per cent of the town was destroyed, the old town burned out, and post-war rebuilding followed a new grid — the old blocks never came back.

That is why the walls and the collegiate church next to them are the strongest trace of the older Stargard, and why the two read differently together than apart. On 17 September 2010 the collegiate church of St Mary Queen of the World and the town's defensive system — walls, gates and towers — were jointly declared a Historic Monument (pomnik historii), Poland's highest heritage rank.

Getting there

• By car — Stargard lies about thirty-five kilometres east of Szczecin, on the roads towards Poznań and Koszalin. Park at the edge of the old town and walk; the circuit is meant to be done on foot.
• By train — the town is a rail junction on the line out of Szczecin, and it is a ten-minute walk from the station to the walls. The easiest way to come for the day without a car.
• On foot — walking the surviving stretches takes roughly an hour. Start at the Mill Gate over the Ina and keep following the masonry rather than cutting through the middle of the old town.

Worth knowing

The walls stand in the middle of a working town, so looking at them costs nothing and can be done at any hour. You pay only for the interiors the museum looks after. If there is time for one thing only, make it the Mill Gate: from the footbridges over the Ina you get water, passage and both towers in a single frame.

Low sun helps the photographs, because dark masonry loses its texture at midday. It is also worth adding the collegiate church: the two make up one Historic Monument, stand a few minutes apart, and only together show the scale on which this town built in the Middle Ages.

How to get there and practical info

Location

old town of Stargard on the Ina river, West Pomeranian Voivodeship

What it is

a medieval ring of town walls with gates and towers, preserved today for about a kilometre

Built

second half of the 13th century; rebuilt and raised between the 15th and 16th centuries

Surviving gates

Mill Gate (a water gate over the Ina channel), Pyrzyce Gate, Wall Gate, St John's Gate

Tallest tower

Red Sea — thirty-four metres, turn of the 15th and 16th centuries

The curiosity

the Mill Gate is the only surviving water gate in Poland and one of two in Europe

Heritage status

Historic Monument since 17 September 2010 (collegiate church and town walls); heritage register

Time needed

about an hour for the circuit, longer with the museum interiors

Current hours and tickets

Archaeological and Historical Museum in Stargard

When to go