Stadtmauer, Medieval city walls in Dettelbach, Germany

The Stadtmauer is Dettelbach's former town fortification, a ring wall with towers, gates and ditch remains encircling the old town. Its core dates from the town's elevation at the turn of the 15th to the 16th century; the wall was largely finished by 1532, when five gates served as the only passages. In the photograph a rough wall of light grey and tan stone with visible mortar rises behind a grass slope, partly covered by ivy and shrubs, meeting a building with an exposed stone lower storey and pale plaster above.

Bishop Rudolf II von Scherenberg of Würzburg obtained town and market rights for Dettelbach from Emperor Frederick III in 1484, and the wall was largely finished by 1532, when five gatekeepers each earned 5 gulden a year. The Mainstockheim tower at the southwest corner may date to 1453. In 1631 the townspeople opened the gates to the Protestant Swedes without a fight.

The five original gates were the only passages through the wall; gatekeepers opened them at dawn and closed them at sunset, and in 1641 the Brückertor gatekeeper was locked in the Herrenturm for failing his duty. Since the 1970s local sculptors have marked the sites of the demolished gates with artworks.

The wall forms a ring around the old town; the southern stretch of the former moat was turned into a public park, the Anlage, in 1887, and is the easiest section to walk. The sites of the demolished gates are marked by sculptures by local artists. Parts of the wall are built over with barns and sheds, so the route is not continuous everywhere.

Of the roughly 52 small wall turrets once recorded, most vanished after 1777; in the mid-19th century the surviving medieval tower stumps were sold to private owners and topped with the square wooden structures that still sit above them, where poor labourers and day-workers lived.