You are now standing between two ruined churches that look like sisters. The one on your right, with the Greek cross plan and the strange wall passages, is Sankt Lars. The one on your left, with the long, thin nave, is called Drotten. Local legend says that these two churches were built by a rich Visby merchant whose two daughters could not stop fighting with each other. Rather than choose between them, he built each daughter her own church, side by side, so they could worship separately. It is a sweet story, but it is not true. The truth is more interesting. These were two parish churches for two communities. Drotten, on your left, was the church of the German parishioners, built in the early thirteenth century, with delicate dog-tooth ornaments and a zigzag pattern in the stonework that you don't find anywhere else on Gotland. Sankt Lars, on your right, was probably the church of the Gotlanders. However, two parishes shared one cemetery. Now, look at Sankt Lars more carefully. Its plan is unusual and looks like the Orthodox churches of Novgorod, the great Russian trading city about a thousand kilometres east of here. Do you know why? Because Visby had a Russian merchant quarter. In the mid-thirteenth century, a treaty signed in the Russian city of Yaroslavl gave merchants of Novgorod the right to trade on what they called ""the Gotlandic Coast."" That meant Visby. Russian merchants lived in this city, and there was even a small Russian Orthodox church on the main square, of which only foundations remain. The name Drotten, by the way, comes from an Old Norse word for ""Lord,"" meaning God. There is no saint by that name. Both the churches were abandoned in the early sixteenth century, after the Reformation. When the Hanseatic system collapsed, even the German parish church got pulled apart by the people it had once kept at a distance. So, why did the system collapse? It wasn’t a single event, but a chain of setbacks. Trade shifted to mainland centres like Lübeck, reducing Visby’s importance. Then the Black Death, a deadly epidemic, devastated the population and economy. Soon after, Valdemar the Fourth of Denmark invaded, forcing heavy ransoms that drained the city’s wealth. Piracy added to the crisis, with the Vitalian Brothers attacking repeatedly, while political instability weakened trade. The final blow came in the early sixteenth century, when forces from Lübeck burned parts of the city. After three years, the people of Visby, furious at Lübeck for burning their city, sacked Drotten themselves and took its inventory home as ""rations."" The Reformation gave them the excuse, but the grief came first. Our next stop is right across the street. Follow the map to get there.