Ærøskøbing

A trade town since about 1250, when it became the commercial and maritime hub of Ærø, and still built to that scale, mostly single-storey houses, the oldest going back to 1645, along streets restored rather than replaced. A fire in 1629 took much of it, and the rebuilding drew on Funen, northern Germany and the duchy of Schleswig, which the island belonged to until it passed to Denmark in 1867. The town pumps in the market square supplied water until 1952. Ærøskøbing won the Europa Nostra prize for cultural heritage in 2002.