Rosenborg Castle was my favourite amongst all the wonders my then-fiancé introduced me to on my first trip to Denmark 14 years ago. I hadn't been back since. Would it retain its appeal? Yes. This moderately-sized urban palace is a jewel box of treasures too great to appreciate properly in just one visit. It was even better the second time around.
If there's one king to remember in Denmark's long history, it's Christian IV. A classic Renaissance man
That brings up another of the glories of Rosenborg: its £15 adult admission fee is a bargain, giving you two attractions for the price of one. The palace provides enough art and architecture to satisfy any hard core tourist, while the treasury is a glorious collection of luxury items that could easily stand on its own.
Most people will start in the palace, a good move to get the sense of the people who lived here before you go look at their jewellery box.
Though Christian established the place as a country retreat in 1606 (amusing as a decent runner could get to the city palace in 5 minutes), descendants added and redecorated for the next 200 years, making it a pastiche of what you’d describe, if English, as Jacobean, Georgian and a bit of baroque. And using English terms isn’t that far-fetched, since the English and Danish royal families regularly inter-married. Christian IV’s sister married James I of England and gave birth to Charles I (the one who lost his head), the sister of British King George III (the one who lost the American colonies) married Danish King Christian VII (an unfortunate match chronicled in the excellent film A Royal Affair) and the current British King’s great grandmother came to England as the Danish Princess Alexandra.
The Danes had a particularly good 17th century. The lower rooms show it, in an opulent style rich with gleaming, intricately carved woods, shining marble floors in black and white diamond pattern, and loads of Northern European, old masters’ style paintings. One of the sights most indicative of the sheer luxury, however, are simple holes in the floor. Christian used to keep an orchestra in the cellar to play, allowing the music to waft up from below; an early all-house sound system. There are some marvellous ceilings here, encrusted with all the three-dimensional skills of the plasterer’s art.
The family had a particular love for silver furniture and Italian pietra dura table tops, which are in abundance throughout but most evident on this ground floor. The marble room is my favourite in this range. It’s a relatively small place but packs a punch. The standard diamond pattern on the floor has morphed into a much busier pattern of squares, the walls are now marble-effect paintwork with pietra dura panelled insets and hung with sliver-framed mirrors, and an almost comically ornate ceiling is full of heraldic symbols from the royal crest. We’re in full Baroque mode this time, but the size of the room suggests the Danes were almost a bit embarrassed to be going so far over the top. It’s a very restrained foray into Italian madness.
The first floor is a bit more of a hotch-potch of styles, heavy on busy Baroque interiors with a few more restrained late 18th century spaces and one bit that veers into Napoleonic neo-classicism. The tapestry-hung rooms packed with art and lavish furniture tend to run together, but there are some you can’t help but remember. Frederick IV’s hall is at one end of the building, with windows on three sides overlooking the gardens, so flooded with light even on a gloomy day. In the centre, under a spectacular rock crystal chandelier, is a pietra dura table so beautiful it stands out from the many others in the palace, and has become a bit of a hallmark of the place; socks and scarves borrowing its patterns available in the gift shop. There’s also an extraordinary mirrored room built into one of the projecting towers, with walls, ceiling and floor all reflecting to infinity.
Tower rooms opening off the main hall offer display space for a suite of silver furniture, a magnificent collection of glass and a rotating display, currently focusing on past queens. Artefacts included Queen Louise’s shotgun. Danish women were expected to shoot as well as the men; the only concession to the queen’s femininity was some additional padding to cushion recoil, otherwise her shotgun matched her husband’s. In another case lay Queen Caroline Mathilde’s garters, confiscated from the possession of court doctor Johann Struense and used in his trial. They’d become lovers, outside of her unhappy marriage and given tacit approval by her ineffectual husband, King Christian VII. But they got up to more than romance, spearheading significant political reforms that went too far for courtiers who brought them both down. It’s the story of A Royal Affair, mentioned above, and makes the seemingly innocent strips of embroidered cloth far more poignant.
There are happier stories to be told in the treasury; downstairs, outside and then back in to the well-protected cellars. These aren’t just the accoutrements of royal ceremony you see at the Tower of London. Before you get to that stuff you have two enormous galleries packed with wonders to explore. Solid gold toy soldiers with jewelled eyes line up for battle. Scores of ivory objects show off virtuoso carving; you can loose yourself in single tusks carved into figures inside cages inside screens. Some of the ivory treasures were carved by members of the royal family, who studied with masters.
Decorative gun barrels and sword hilts show off the capabilities of weaponry as works of art. There are exquisite walking sticks, beautiful clocks, ornate vases, caskets and cups. Precious objects are fashioned into everyday things, elevating them to magnificence: rock crystal punch bowls, amber goblets, pietra dura portrait miniatures. There’s even a set of ceremonial drapery for a horse, encrusted with seed pearls and stiff with embroidery. The matching set of armour has elephant heads fancifully forming the shoulders and tip of the helmet (the elephant being a heraldic beast of Denmark). Some items are so ornate as to be positively ugly: a fashion to collect Roman cameos and then set them like barnacles on the outside of tableware should have been illegal.
Overall, the collection is what I like to classify as royal tchotchkes, and these two rooms are on par with — though not quite as big as — my favourite kunstkammer display inside the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. But it’s just the opening act. Follow a staircase further down, go through an enormous safe door and find the real treasure.
This deep, subterranean gallery of three interlocking octagonal rooms is watched by a guard at its centre and, no doubt, by many more on video. Despite the high security, however, you’re allowed to take photos of the objects on display here, something absolutely forbidden with the British Crown Jewels. The walls, floor, ceiling and display backgrounds are all black or grey, and the lighting carefully pinpointed on the treasures, so you’re almost overwhelmed by the sparkle of the diamonds in the cases before you.
There are multiple crowns here, my favourite being Christian IV’s renaissance masterpiece.
Chains of chivalric orders hang next to exquisite, detailed ornaments.
Sceptres are as delicate as flowers.
Four centuries of precious ornament convene here, but it’s the early stuff crafted for Christian IV and his children that I love the most. Whether it’s the castle above or the treasures beneath it, Denmark’s most memorable king left magic behind at Rosenborg
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Fabulous content!
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