Metravel city quest
City Vyborg: free walking route “Quest: St Olaf's Castle and the Town Behind the Walls” along the sights. 10 points. Approximately 2 h. Quests and legends
In the summer of 1293, a Swedish army led by Marshal Torgils Knutsson reached an island deep in the Gulf of Vyborg and founded a fortress there. Under the protection of its walls a trading town grew up: in 1403 it received town rights and a seal bearing the letter W, and in the 1470s it ringed itself with its own wall and towers.
Over seven centuries Vyborg has been Swedish, Russian and Finnish, but its medieval framework has never gone away. The streets of the Old Town still run along the lines that a Swedish engineer laid out in the 1640s, and here and there, between the apartment buildings, you will find the fortified houses of merchants, built even earlier. Such little burgher “fortresses” have survived in Russia only here.
Today you will walk from the castle to the market square, the way a visiting merchant would have come from the quay: past the founder of the town, the houses of the merchant guilds and the two surviving towers of the town wall. On the way you will hear Vyborg's loudest legend, about the explosion that saved the town from assault in 1495. The route is on foot, about a kilometre and a half, with no backtracking; halfway along there is a rest stop with a Vyborg pretzel.
We start on Fortress Bridge, at the turn toward Castle Island.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
Right in front of you, on a rocky island in the middle of the strait, stands Vyborg Castle, where the town began in 1293. Above its walls rises the main tower, named after St Olaf, the Norwegian king who brought Christianity to his country and was venerated all over Scandinavia.
Opening hours: Castle Island daily 9:00–19:30 (entry until 19:00); St Olaf's Tower 9:15–19:30. Check the hours on the museum website before you visit. · Ticket: Entry to the island is paid, tickets at vmuzey.com; with a ticket to an exhibition on the island, entry to the island is free, while St Olaf's Tower needs a separate ticket.
At the entrance to the Old Town from the bridge, on both sides of the street, two female figures in classical robes stand on granite pedestals. They are the allegories “Industry” and “Maritime Trade”, set up here in the 1870s.
In the middle of the little Old Town Hall Square, on a tall round granite pedestal, stands a bronze knight in a helmet: Marshal Torgils Knutsson, the founder of the castle and the town. He faces the island, as if he were still keeping an eye on his fortress.
On the quiet Vodnoy Zastavy Street stands a squat whitewashed house under a high roof, with pointed-arch windows and a large arch below. This is the Knights' House, one of the oldest dwelling houses in Vyborg, which later served as the Catholic church of St Hyacinth.
Deep in the plot at the corner of Progonnaya Street stands a three-storey tower house with a pointed roof, and beside it a two-storey coach house. This is the Burgher's Manor, one of the four medieval merchant “fortresses” of Vyborg, built in the 16th–17th centuries.
Opening hours: during the day; check the exact hours before you visit · Ticket: Restaurant and baked goods are priced by the menu; check prices on the spot.
Above the roofs of Krepostnaya Street rises a white multi-tiered tower, and next to it, from behind a mesh fence, roofless red-brick walls look out. The tower is the former bell tower of the Old Cathedral, and the walls are all that remains of the church itself.
On a green knoll, set back from the line of the street, stands a small whitewashed house with thick walls and a tiled roof. This is the house of the merchant guild of the Holy Spirit.
At the end of Vyborgskaya Street rises a four-sided tower with a white eight-sided top and a tall green spire. This is the Town Hall Tower, one of the two surviving towers of the wall that the town surrounded itself with in the 1470s.
At the edge of Market Square stands a squat roundel tower under a shallow dome with a spire. It was built in 1547–1550 on the orders of the Swedish king Gustav Vasa, and the construction was led by the fortification engineer Hans Bergen.
Across the square from the Round Tower stands the pink building of the covered market, with a high gable, a large entrance arch and a corner turret under a pointed tent roof. The market was built in 1904–1906 to a design by the architect Karl Segerstad, the very man who designed the pedestal for the monument to Torgils Knutsson.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.