Market Square and Alter Schwede
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Wismar's Market Square is enormous for a city of this size, which is your first clue that medieval trade was not a side activity.
The city was first documented in the thirteenth century and quickly joined the commercial networks that became the Hanseatic League.
In 1259, Wismar, Lübeck and Rostock concluded an agreement to protect their trade routes. The city's official chronicle treats this as an early milestone in Wismar's Hanseatic history.
The market needed room for goods, carts, contracts and regulation.
At the edge stands the brick house known as Alter Schwede — 'Old Swede'. The building itself dates from around 1380, centuries before Swedish sovereignty. The restaurant name arrived only in the nineteenth century and commemorates the Swedish period.
That distinction is excellent tourist inoculation. A Swedish name does not make a house Swedish-era architecture.
The medieval building instead represents the commercial housing type of the Hanseatic city.
UNESCO values Wismar and Stralsund partly for preserving such merchant and craft building traditions alongside monumental churches.
Look around the square. Civic wealth appears in scale rather than marble. Brick was the dominant prestige material of the region.
Our next stop is the Wasserkunst in the middle of the square. It is later than the Hanseatic golden age and demonstrates that successful urban government eventually has to solve the less romantic problem of drinking water.