NATIONALMUSEET
Denmark’s largest museum, the National Museum presents the history and culture of the Danes from prehistoric times through to the present. It also houses a wonderful collection of Greek and Egyptian antiquities, an ethnographic collection, and the Children’s Museum. Many of the displays derive from King Frederik III’s Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, put together around 1650.
NEED TO KNOW
Ny Vestergade 10 • 33 13 44 11 • www.natmus.dk • Open Jul–Aug: 10am–5pm daily; Sep–Jun: 10am–5pm Tue–Sun
Free guided tours: Jul: 10:30am, noon, 1:30pm daily; Aug–Sep: 10:30am, noon, 1:30pm Sat & Sun; Oct–Dec: 10:30am, 1:30pm Sat & Sun
Victorian Home: Frederiksholms Kanal 18; open 11am–1pm (every hour) Sat & Sun (only via a guided tour, buy tickets at the museum); adm $7.50, under 18 free
- The Victorian Home, a plush apartment with beautiful, authentic 19th-century interiors, owned by the museum, is located nearby.
- Have brunch or open sandwiches at the café.
Museum Guide
Fronted by a courtyard, the entrance hall has toilets, lockers, and the museum shop, selling books and educational toys with a Viking twist. The Children’s Museum is to your left. The ground floor has the prehistoric collection, while the first floor has a range of displays. There’s a Danish history collection on the second floor, and the antiquities are on the third floor. Temporary exhibitions rotate regularly.
Museum Floor Plan
1. Room 117
This 18th-century bourgeois interior can be traced to the town of Aalborg in Jutland. A room in a sea of glass-display galleries, it features a heavy wooden four-poster bed, chest, coffered wooden ceiling, and mullioned windows.
Room 117
2. Denmark’s Oldest Coin
The name of Denmark and an image of a Danish king are depicted on this silver coin, displayed in Room 144, that was struck in 995 CE.
3. Prehistoric Denmark and the Viking Age
The museum’s most popular exhibit is this display of the country’s 14,000-year history. These intricate golden horns were reconstructed in the 20th century.
Prehistoric Denmark and the Viking Age
4. Cylinder Perspective Table
Part of Frederik III’s Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, the table shows him and his wife painted ingeniously in a distorted perspective, rectified when viewed in the reflective cylinder.
5. Gundestrup Cauldron
Found near Gundestrup, this lovely silver cauldron from the Iron Age is decorated with animals and mystical figures.
6. Sun Chariot
The unique Sun Chariot or Solvognen was dug up in 1902 by a farmer who was ploughing his field. This 3,400-year-old artifact from the Bronze Age shows a wheeled horse pulling a large sun disk gilded on one side.
Sun Chariot
7. Inuit Culture
This collection from Greenland showcases the skill and creative ingenuity of the people of the frozen North. The displays include clothing, such as embroidered anoraks and boots, plus toys and watercolors of daily life.
8. State Rooms
The State Rooms date back to the time when this building was a royal palace. They have been well preserved and are virtually intact from the period 1743–4. Next door, the Great Hall is adorned with original Flemish tapestries.
9. China, Japan, and the Far East
The Far East is well represented in this marvellous collection that includes Japanese lacquerware, fabulously costumed Samurai warriors replete with weaponry, and beautiful Imperial Dragon robes.
10. Oak Burial Coffins
Seven Bronze Age oak coffins, dating back to 1,400 BCE, occupy the ground floor. The Egtved grave, which holds the body of a fully clad young woman, is an extraordinary exhibit.
oak burial coffin
