The tower house in Allinge

The first thought you get when you see the Tower House is that it must be an old lighthouse, but it never was. The tower house was built by Doctor Sigfred Borch in 1898 as a doctor’s house and private residence.

It is said that he was interested in the stars and that the tower functioned as an observatory, however this information has not been possible to find at present, so the tower may in fact also have been built to enjoy the quite formidable view of the city and the sea. Dr. Borch was very interested in photography, which he had learned from the court photographer Weller in Copenhagen.

In 1882 he was part of an Arctic expedition to find the sea route to China. North of Siberia things went wrong, the ship froze in the ice and it took almost a year before the ship broke free again.

Dr. Borch, whose mother was from Bornholm, was married in 1884 to Thora from Bornholm in Rønne Church. In 1896 the couple moved to Allinge and had 3 children.

He was the town doctor until 1926. and died in 1933. The couple had a son whose name was also Sigfred Borch, he continued in his father’s footsteps, became a doctor and settled in the Tower House with his medical practice until about 1964. The Tower House was then sold to Doctor Kromann, who had his residence and medical practice until 1977. In 1989, the building was sold to a housing association in Nexø, which furnished several apartments in the Tower House.