Town walls in Sulzbach am Main, Medieval fortification in Sulzbach am Main, Germany.

The town walls of Sulzbach am Main form a ring about one kilometre long, built of red Main sandstone around 1500 for roughly 500 inhabitants. The wall is some 0.75 metres thick, with flat-faced sandstone on the outside and smaller rubble inside, held by anchor stones rather than through-stones. Two round towers flanked each gate, and keyhole and horizontal loopholes remain; an archaeological window at the foot of the west tower shows the original ground level.

The wall ring is dated to around 1500, when it enclosed the buildings and gardens of a village of about 500 inhabitants. Two gateways flanked by round towers, at the northwest and south, controlled access. After 1787 a third breach, the Neues Tor, was cut in the southwest without a Zwinger. Town growth, industrialisation and changed traffic led to the demolition of ever more stretches of wall, first in the east and south, later on the western edge.

The wall's name lives on in the Gasthaus "Zum Engel" on Spessartstraße: until 1850 the street ended at the wall, and around 1865 a hole let people slip through to the inn, so locals nicknamed the inn "Loch" (hole). A Madonna figure from the 15th century stood in a niche of a round tower on Bahnhofstraße until it was stolen in the late 20th century and replaced by a copy.

The preserved wall sections and round tower are accessible from public areas and can be explored on foot around the old town. Walking along the perimeter gives the clearest view of how the different defensive elements connected and functioned together.

The fortification displays specialized arrow slits in different shapes that gave archers varied angles for shooting at approaching enemies. These specific design features of medieval defense technique become visible when you examine the wall sections closely.