Every design for Marstal

Marstal began as a small fishing hamlet, and its name comes from an old word for a horse stable, hardly a hint of the seafaring town it would become. Shipping has been its lifeblood for centuries, and it is still home port to a large fleet of coasters and to a maritime school that has trained navigators for the Danish merchant fleet for more than a hundred years.

Its place on Ærø, the largest town on the island, with an easy channel out to the Baltic, made the town's skippers traders and, in the eighteenth century, accepted smugglers. The houses were never built around a square; they simply climbed up the paths from the jetties. In the harbour, the islet of Frederiksøen keeps a fieldstone pier built by local seamen as volunteers, and Marstal Kirke holds seven votive ships, its benches painted blue for the sea.

Marstal Søfartsmuseum keeps that whole story, and the Monument over Faldne Danske Søfolk remembers the sailors who never came home. Reason enough to carry this harbour town with you.