The churches of Saint Per (or Saint Peter) and Saint Hans (the latter may refer to either John the Baptist or John the Evangelist) once made up the biggest church in Visby.
Reconstruction drawing by E Swanström after H Thoresen 1937
It is believed that in the beginning of the 11th century, the Christians expelled the old-believer pagans from this site and demolished a pagan temple that stood here. Instead, they built a stone church called St. Hans, which became the first stone church on Gotland. About a century later this church became too small for the congregation, and so another church - St. Per - was built just south of St. Hans.
By the first half of the 13th century, the first St. Hans was replaced with a new, bigger St. Hans church, which was built as a three-nave basilica in Gothic style. Part of the south wall was built as a common wall with St. Per. In the south wall between the north-east corner of St. Pers and the west nave of St. Hans Church was the church's main entrance, a magnificent portal with sloping sides originally decorated with colonnades.
From the beginning, St. Hans became the parish church for the Goths in Visby, while the neighbor St. Per became a German parish church. The character of the congregation changed increasingly as the Goths and Germans intermarried and in the latter part of the 13th century St. Hans became an upper-class church for both Goths and Germans. However, the burial places were still separate, the Goths in the more prestigious east and the Germans in the west.
In the 16th century during the Reformation, the bourgeoisie chose both St. Hans and St. Per as their church. In St. Hans' church, which was the larger of the two, Gotland's first Lutheran service was held. When Bishop Hans Brask was visiting in 1527, he expelled the Lutherans from the church, but as soon as the bishop left the island, the Lutherans again held mass there.
The taxation of the churches after the Reformation, combined with the fact that the inhabitants of Visby were no longer so rich, meant that they could no longer maintain all their churches. Both St. Hans and St. Per sadly fell into decay and were partially demolished during the 17th century. Today, it is difficult to distinguish which of the remaining stones belongs to which church. Still, it is a beautiful ruin that tells a lot about Gotland’s past.
