Danish tavern resumes journey after 232 years

KOLKATA: An 18th century edifice that was falling into pieces and stitched back to its original form in Serampore will now be a café-by-the-Hooghly run by Coffee House. The café will generate revenue needed for its maintenance so that the painstakingly refurbished structure is not reduced to ruins all over again.
It has been restored as part of the Serampore Initiative by the National Museum of Denmark, in tandem with the West Bengal Heritage Commission.Some of the rooms will be rented out by the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation (WBTDC), which has taken over the restored tavern. The tavern, in its new avatar as the ‘Denmark Tavern and Hotel’, will be thrown open on Wednesday. Five Nordic ambassadors — from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland — will attend the inauguration.
“This is our second government-backed live-and-conserve endeavour after the St Olav’s Church project, which was reopened in 2016,” said conservation-architect Manish Chakraborti, who has led the project with his team of skilled masons from Murshidabad and the Sunderbans. Flemming Aalund, NMD’s architect has fine-tuned the restoration.
NMD historian Simon Rastén said, “Nobody remembered the original name of the ruined building. It was like a detective work to search the archives and it felt great when I realized that it must be the well-known Denmark Tavern and Hotel from 1786, which was located at the Nishan Ghat where the Danes kept their flagstaff and salutation cannons.”
Aalund said, “By restoring this ruin we could recreate a main axes of Serampore’s original urban layout, going from the landing point at the river, through the main gate to the old Danish government house from the 1770s.”