Vestermarie Church is located in the little village of

Vestermarie Vestermarie is a village midway between Rønne and Aakirkeby on the Danish island of Bornholm. As of 2022, it has a population of 240. History The village takes its name from the original Vestermarie Church which was dedicated to the Virgin Mar ...

some 8 km east of

Rønne Rønne ( sv, Rönne) is the largest town on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It has a population of 13,807 (1 January 2022). It was a municipality in its own right from 1970 until 2002, when Bornholm was a county ( Danish: ''Born ...

on the Danish island of Bornholm. The present

Neo-Romanesque Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...

church replaces a now demolished 14th-century building.Otto Norn, C. G. Schultz, Erik Skov, "Vester-Marie Kirke"
Bornholms Nørre Herred, Danmarks Kirker, Bornholm, Nationalmuseet, Gad, 1954, pp. 223–243.

The medieval church

The church's name is first recorded in 1335 in a document attesting to its having been dedicated to the

Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...

. The building, made essentially of fieldstone but with some sandstone, consisted of a Romanesque chancel and a nave, a western tower (also added during the Romanesque period), and a Gothic porch for the south door. There had once been an

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

but by 1861 it had been replaced by a small extension to the chancel. The tower of the old church is said to have served as a landmark for sailors. The old building was torn down in the 1880s in connection with the construction of the new church.

Today's building

The new church was consecrated on 19 July 1885. It lies on high ground in the southern part of Vestermarie parish, the largest in area on the island of Bornholm. It was designed in the Neo-Romanesque style by

Mathias Bidstrup Mathias Andreas Bidstrup (25 March 1852 – 25 January 1929) was a Danish architect. Biography He was born in Rønne, Bornholm, the son of cobbler Jorgen Bernhard Bidstrup and Marie Hansine Sonne. Mathias Bidstrup attended the Royal Danish ...

and consists of a

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

with an

, a nave and a tower, all of reddish granite with corners and trimmings of grey stone. The main entrance is on the western front of the tower. The roof and the pyramid spire are of slate. Bornholm - Vestermarie Kirke - indre

Interior

Covered by a wooden ceiling, galleries line the north and south sides of the nave. The pulpit and the altarpiece depicting Jesus in the

Garden of Gethsemane Gethsemane () is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus underwent the agony in the garden and was arrested before his crucifixion. It is a place of great reson ...

date from 1885 when the new church was consecrated."Om Vestermarie kirke
. Retrieved 4 October 2012.

References

{{Bornholm Denmark Churches in Bornholm Churches completed in 1885

The medieval church

Today's building

Interior

See also

References