Oldest city of south west Fyn

Faaborg is an old town located at the south western corner of Fyn. The city has been the main city of the area since the 12^th century when it was founded. The name borg indicates there used to be some sort of fortress in the town – but this has long gone and there is no castle located in the old city.

The city hasn’t grown much since the old days and today it only has a little less than 7,000 inhabitants. The lack of city development is actually fortunate for tourist. Since the lack of development has meant the old city center hasn’t changed much for a long time.

When you get to the center of Faaborg you will find many old houses with a few cobbled streets as well. There aren’t any particularly big sights – it is just a very nice little old town to go and wonder around for a bit. It is generally easy just to park in the town for a day trip to the center – but you can actually stay at several different hotels in town and there are several small restaurants in the city center so there should be something to fill the stomach.

One special attraction in the city is an old city gate. In all cities around Denmark there used to be city gates – this was either for protection – or in many cases it was just to make sure people coming to the town paid a tariff at the city gate to be allowed to sell their produce on the city markets. With the free constitution of 1849 the tariffs were abolished and almost all of the old city gates around Denmark were torn down. Actually only two of this type of city gate survived until today – one is located in the small town of Stege on Møn which is a small island south of Zealand. The other old city gate is located right here in Faaborg. It is a pretty little old gate and you definitely should look up the old city gate.

The reason this old gate has survived is primarily practical. The gate was built right next to a house of a rich merchant – and this merchant was against tearing down the house since his private property was sharing a wall with the gate. Hence tearing down the gate would damage the rich merchant house – so the gate survived and it is still standing till today. Now nobody will push for the demolishing of the old gate since it has become a symbol of the town.