Maribo

Sister cities

• Hudiksvall Municipality

History

Saint Birgitta (1303–1373), also known as Birgitta of Vadstena, has cast her shadow on this municipality, and is shown on the municipality's coat-of-arms. Her order established the Bridgettine Order's Abbey in Maribo, when 1416 monks from Vadstena Abbey were sent to Maribo, then called Skimminge, to help establish a monastery. In 1536, however, the abbey was abolished and transformed into a convent for noble virgins in 1556. After the old town church burned down in 1596, the abbey church then in place received status as town church. King Christian IV's daughter, Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, was probably the abbey's most famous resident. In 1685 after her release from 21 years imprisonment for high treason from the Blue Tower (Blåtårn) in Copenhagen's Castle, she spent her final years in the then already dilapidated abbey, and was buried in a crypt at the church, until her body was removed shortly after the burial. In 1803-1804 the islands of Lolland-Falster, which previously belonged to the Funen diocese, were made into an independent diocese, and the abbey church was given the status of the diocese's cathedral (domkirke) now known as Maribo Cathedral. The bishop, however, resides in Nykøbing Falster. Several times during the 1800s the church has been secured against decline.