Fredrikstad’s Old Town took shape as a star-shaped fortress after Norway lost the neighboring region of Bohuslän to Sweden in 1658, and the settlement’s economy grew steadily around the timber trade in the decades that followed. Johan Nils Hansen, a merchant known by the historical trade designation høker, someone licensed to sell certain goods by official writ, built a multistory residence at the corner of Voldportgaten and Raadhusgarten in 1835, in the fortress town’s historic Twelfth Quarter, giving the building its old name, Graffgården.
The fortress itself remained an active military garrison for over three centuries, with soldiers stationed inside its walls until the last left in 2002. Rather than becoming an open-air museum, the Old Town has stayed continuously inhabited, and Hansen’s 1835 house now operates as a 17-room hotel in Northern Europe’s best-preserved fortress town, with a free ferry still connecting it across the river to modern Fredrikstad.