Kniepertor

The Kniepertor stands at the northern end of Stralsund’s old town wall, one of only two surviving gateways from the city’s medieval defences. Built of brick under a tiled roof, it marks the start of Knieperstraße where it meets the Olof-Palme-Platz. The tower rises more than twenty metres, its plain lower storey topped by two upper floors of tall, narrow windows. The gate has twice barred invaders: it resisted Wallenstein’s troops in the Thirty Years’ War and, after Prussian victories in 1807, Napoleon’s forces could not enter until 1809. Inside the passage, iron fittings still hold the chains that once sealed the street against attackers. A stone and plaque on the city side recall Friedrich Gustav von Petersson, a comrade of Ferdinand von Schill, executed here in 1809. Today the tower houses flats reached by a spiral stair. The archway, once used by trams until the 1960s, now serves pedestrians and cyclists. From the square outside, visitors look up at the brickwork and the shallow pointed roof, while the surviving stretch of town wall leads the eye along the line of the old fortifications.