Danish Fort

It was founded by the Danish East India Company in 1620 when the main fort in Trankebar city, known as Fort Dansborg, was built by a Danish captain named Ove Gedde as the residence of the governor and other officials for about 150 years. It is now a museum hosting a collection of artefacts from the time of Danish presence in the region. A Danish factory (commercial settlement) was opened here as early as 1620.
Tranquebar was taken by the British in 1801, but restored in 1814, and finally purchased, along with the other Danish settlements in India, in 1845.
In Danish times Tranquebar was a busy port, but it lost its importance when the railway was opened to Nagapattinam.

The first Protestant missionaries to set foot in India were two Lutherans from Germany, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Pluetschau, who began work in 1705 in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar. They translated the Bible into the local Tamil language, and afterwards into Hindustani. They made little progress at first, but gradually the mission spread to Madras, Cuddalore and Tanjore. Today bishop of Tranquebar is the official title of a bishop in the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church (TELC) in South India which was founded in 1919 as a result of the German Lutheran Leipzig Mission and Church of Sweden Mission. The seat of the Bishop, the Cathedral and its Church House (“Tranquebar House”) is in Tiruchirappalli.
Moravian Brethren missionaries from Herrnhut, Saxony established the Brethren’s Garden at Porayar near Tranquebar as a missionary center for a number of years.

The Italian Catholic, Father Constanzo Beschi,( also known as Veerama munivar in Tamil whose greatest work in Tamil poetry was “Tembawani ” ) who worked from 1711 to 1740, found himself in conflict with the Lutheran pioneers at Tranquebar, against whom he wrote several polemical works.
The churches as well as the fort and the city gates are being restored for tourism.

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