Weis' Stue, Ribe — claims 1600

The claim

A timber-framed house on the square under Ribe cathedral, its western bays raised about 1600 on medieval foundations and its rooms fitted in 1704, which is how they remain. Four generations of the Weiss family traded here from 1762; the town bought it in 1914 and it went back to use as a tap room after restoration. It serves food and lets rooms above.

What the records show

The Danish agency for palaces and culture registers this house as listed, and its account — published through the national encyclopaedia — dates the five western bays of the front to about 1600, with three eastern bays added some decades later, all on the foundations of a medieval house. An article by K. H. Rosenstand in Ripenser-Bladet for December 1917, transcribed on RibeWiki, is the second reading and the more useful one. Rosenstand, who chaired the committee that bought the house for the town four years earlier, writes that neither the builder nor the building year is known but that much points to the reign of Christian IV, and he sets out the trade: Cecilie Marie Thun, a coppersmith's wife, sold the house in 1762 to Anders Andersen Weis, a linen merchant who died in 1795; his son Søren Andersen Weis took a burgess's licence as a linen merchant on 8 December 1796; farmers coming in on market days to borrow his corn measure got into the habit of buying drink from him to go with their food, and in 1830 he took out a further licence as a distiller and publican, without having sat the examination distillers were supposed to sit. His son Anders Pedersen Weis had the house from 1833 and took his own publican's licence in 1859. The hotel's history page gives the same 1830 licence in its own words. That 1830 is the first year anyone can point at for drink sold to the public here, and it is what this row now records. The board over the street door carries the name Søren Andersen Weis together with the year 1704, but the two halves belong to different owners: the Thuns held the house in 1704, the Weisses did not buy it until 1762, and the hotel's own account says the dated timber was found during the restoration that followed the town's purchase. The family gave up in 1913-14, the town bought the house for 30,000 kroner and restored it under the architect Borch, and it went back to use as a tap room afterwards. Nobody we can read says in words that a visitor may drink here without eating, and the house takes table bookings, so that question is left open.

Dated evidence for Weis' Stue, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1600	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1600	Present building	https://trap.lex.dk/Weis'_Stue,_Ribe
1830	First record of a drinking house here	trap.lex.dk

What to look for inside

A burgess's licence of 1830 as distiller and publican, the first record of drink sold here
A board over the street door carrying the name Søren Andersen Weis and the year 1704, from two different owners
The watch room, where Ribe's night watchmen sat out their shifts and, it is said, took a dram

Visiting

Weis' Stue is in Ribe, Denmark, at Torvet 2, 6760 Ribe. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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