Ribe, Puggårdsgade 3

Facts

The psalmist's workshop

Taarnborg in Ribe is a grand Renaissance building from circa 1580. It has two floors rising above a high cellar, corbiestep gables and a hexagonal staircase tower. Taarnborg is mentioned as early as in 1440, but there are no records of its structures. Over the centuries, Taarnborg was the domicile of many notable personnages, including Denmark's first great historian, Anders Sørensen Vedel, and the bishop and psalmist, Hans Adolph Brorson. In 1761, Brorson sold Taarnborg to his diocese, thereby ensuring that the building remained a bishop's residence. In 1907, Taarnborg opened as a post office following extensive work to restore the building to its original appearance.

Partly a public place

Selected entry

Haunted bishop's residence

Story written by Erik Bjerre Fisker

Time / Periode 1741 1764

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Hans Adolph Brorson became Bishop of Ribe in 1741, after which he moved into Hans Tavsen's bishop's palace by the cathedral. The bishop's palace was much dilapidated and Brorson applied for permission to move to other quarters. He bought Taarnborg in 1743, where he went on to write some of his best-known psalms. Brorson had 16 children, 13 of them with his first wife. At the age of 12, the first-born, Nicolaj, suffered a partial paralysis and increasing insanity and had to be kept locked up in a chamber. Only Hermann the coachman could calm the boy in his fits of madness. The story goes that the ghost of the coachman haunts the staircase of Taarnborg to get to the boy's chamber.