From basement to attic: Now you can get a tour of Jens Bang’s Stone House
We all know it.
The great magnificent stone house by Østerå, which has stood there for more than 400 years.
Most people, however, only know it from the outside – but now Aalborg Historical Museum is opening up for tours inside the house.
The first one is already Monday, October 20.
In the middle of Aalborg lies a beautiful old stone house, the likes of which are not known anywhere else in Denmark – or in all of Scandinavia for that matter.
It is Jens Bang’s Stone House, which was built as a merchant’s residence back in 1624.
For more than 400 years, the stone house has reigned in the center of Aalborg as a symbol of the city’s prosperity and central importance during the Renaissance.
With tall gables adorned with winding sandstone ornaments reaching toward the sky, the magnificent building was the wholesale merchant’s advertisement sign, impossible to overlook in 17th-century Aalborg.
From basement to attic
The beautiful building has miraculously survived the passage of time and is still a striking part of the city’s skyline – and now you can join an exclusive tour in and around the house.
Here, you’ll go all the way around the old merchant’s house from the outside and then inside behind the walls, from the basement corridors to the top attic – and of course, you’ll hear the many stories about the merchant and the many pharmacists who have lived in the house over the years.
Jens Bang’s Stone House was built in the Dutch Renaissance style and therefore resembles the grand contemporary buildings along the canals in, for example, Amsterdam.
A style that was fashionable in Denmark at the time and which also characterizes major architectural works such as Rosenborg Castle and the Stock Exchange (Børsen) in Copenhagen.
The pharmacist moves in
Half a century after its construction, the skilled pharmacist Johannes Friedenreich bought the house and established one of the country’s first and largest pharmacies.
He supplied all of North Jutland not only with medicine but also with spices, wine, and other luxury goods.
There was a pharmacy in the building from the 1670s – when the pharmacist made all the medicine himself – up until 2013, when medicine came pre-packaged from factories.
Today, the stone house is home to, among other things, a restaurant, private residences, and a medical practice, and in the attic, a museum has been set up with the old pharmacy’s furnishings: counters and drawers, jars and glassware, laboratory equipment, and not least exotic medicines – all of which, over 350 years, ended up in the attic whenever the pharmacist’s family cleaned up.
The tour takes you through the history of the house from basement to attic.