Tharangambadi(or Tranquebar) is a panchayat town in Nagapattinam district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It was a Danish colony in India from 1620-1845. It is spelled Trankebar or Tranquebar in Danish, which came from the native Tamil, Tarangambadi, meaning "place of the singing waves".It is located in Nagapattinam district, about 100 km south of Pondicherry, near the mouth of a distributary of Kaveri river.

Attractions:

Fort Dansborg: It was founded by the Danish East India Company in 1620 when the main fort in Trankebar city, known as Fort Dansborg, was built by a Danish captain named Ove Gjedde as the residence of the governor and other officials for about 150 years. It is now a museum hosting a collection of artefacts from the time of Danish presence in the region. A Danish factory (commercial settlement) was opened here as early as 1620.

Churches:a jesuit Catholic church was already in place before that, catering for the Indo-Portuguese community. The Catholic church was probably demolished to build the fort.[citation needed] This fort was the residence and headquarters of the governor and other officials for about 150 years. It is now a museum hosting a collection of artifacts from the colonial era. Fort Dansborg at Tharangambadi, built by Danish Admiral, Ove Gjedde.

Among the first Protestant missionaries to set foot in India were two Lutherans from Germany, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Pluetschau, who began work in 1705 in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar. Ziegenbalg translated the Old and New Testaments into Tamil, imported a printing press, and printed the New Testament in Tamil in 1714.

They were forced to learn the broken Portuguese, that was the lingua franca between Indians and Europeans at the time,[citation needed] and later on translated the Bible into the local Tamil language. They also established a printing press, which within a hundred years of its establishment in 1712 had printed 300 books in Tamil.At first they only made little progress in their religious efforts, but gradually the mission spread to Madras, Cuddalore and Tanjore. Today bishop of Tranquebar is the official title of a bishop in the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church (TELC) in South India which was founded in 1919 as a result of the German Lutheran Leipzig Mission and Church of Sweden Mission. The seat of the Bishop, the Cathedral and its Church House ("Tranquebar House") is in Tiruchirappalli.

The Zion church was sanctified in 1701, which is the oldest Protestant church in India. In 1718, The New Jerusalem Church was constructed.[3] Moravian Brethren missionaries from Herrnhut, Saxony established the Brethren's Garden at Porayar near Tranquebar and operated it as a missionary centre for a number of years. An Italian Catholic Father Constanzo Beschi, who worked in the colony from 1711 to 1740, found himself in conflict with the Lutheran pioneers at Tranquebar, against whom he wrote several polemical works.