Rostocker Tor

The Rostocker Tor stands in Ribnitz, a district of Ribnitz-Damgarten in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is one of the oldest surviving town gates in the state and once protected the western approach to Ribnitz. The gate sits beside a bridge over the Klostergraben, a small moat that once formed part of the town’s defences. Built around 1430 on the site of an earlier gate from 1290, the tower was altered in 1930 when the southern side was removed for traffic. The scar of this change remains visible on the tower today. In 1981 the structure was restored, and since 2002 the passage has been closed to cars. The American-German artist Lyonel Feininger painted the gate several times, most famously in his 1912 etching ‘The Gate’, an original of which is held by the town. The gate is a four-storey brick tower with a pointed archway. Its ground floor is topped by a frieze of square panels with lancet quatrefoils. The two floors above carry rows of pointed decorative recesses, and the top row has small slit openings that once served as arrow slits. Each corner of the upper floor is crowned by a pinnacle. Above the pyramid-shaped roof rises an octagonal turret, each side pierced by a small pointed recess and another arrow slit.