Hobro Church

Address

Adelgade 52 B
9500 Mariagerfjord
Distance: 2,45 Km

Contact

Telephone: 98 52 07 63

Website

http://www.hobrokirke.dk

Hobro Church is a beautiful church that is located on top of a hill, so that the tower can be seen from several places in the city. If you come to Hobro by boat, the church tower can also be glimpsed via Mariager Fjord.

The church is not just a beautiful church, but also a special church that is a little different compared to the other Danish churches. Most Danish churches have the church tower to the west and the altar to the east. Thus, it has always been possible to use the churches as a compass, so that you know where the four corners of the world were. However, Hobro Church is one of the few that has both the tower and the altar to the east. So if you want to see the sunrise at the church, you must turn your gaze towards the horizon in the direction of the tower.

Architect Bindesbøll came to town

Hobro Church was formerly a Romanesque church built in square stone. The church fell into disrepair due to poverty, great fires and war and had to be demolished in 1848. The architect Gottlieb Bindesbøll, who is particularly known for the Thorvaldsens Museum, came to be responsible for the new church, which was inaugurated in 1852.

Bindesbøll got his ideas from many places. The tower is unconventionally placed above the altar at the east end of the church, where it presents itself best, seen from the town's main street. The bay windows function in the construction as "pillars", which must take the extra pressure from the roof that arises because the vault in the church goes high into the roof space. The bricks are characteristic by their alternation between red and yellow brick bands and by the staircase frieze, which repeats inside the church and thus binds the inside and the outside together.

In 1993-94, the church underwent a thorough restoration. Mostly inside, where the church has completely changed character. All plaster was renewed so that it could form a good basis for the new color scheme. The clue for the entire restoration work was to find a way back to Bindesbøll's ideas. The inspiration from Bindesbøll had to connect with contemporary thoughts, so that our time came to make its independent contribution to the history of the church.

The artist Arne L. Hansen was chosen to take care of the color scheme. He was given the limited task of adapting the church's colors to the colors of the Skovgaard mosaic in the choir. With great certainty he has solved this task, so that the church as a whole appears bright and uplifting to the mind. The colors of the vault as well as the walls and benches form a context, where even the mosaic on the altar wall has come to stand stronger than it did before. And a new organ at the other end of the church also appears as a natural part of the whole.

Bindesbøll's original plan for altar decoration was first realized in connection with the church's 100th anniversary in 1952 with a mosaic of "the enthroned Christ", executed by Johan Thomas Skovgaard. This altarpiece is no longer in Hobro Church, as it was handed over to Sønderup Church for just DKK 1. For the church's 100th anniversary, the church also got a new cross. The granite baptismal font, the pulpit, two chandeliers, the epitaphs on the east wall of the nave and the north wall of the choir and two candlesticks on the altar were also transferred from the old medieval church, which were donated to the church in 1604 by mayor Niels Lauritzen.