Christiansborg Palace

Christiansborg is the seat of Danish power in a single building. It stands on Slotsholmen, the island where Bishop Absalon built the first castle in the twelfth century, and today it houses the Folketing, the Danish parliament, the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court, while the monarch uses the Royal Reception Rooms for state banquets, audiences and gala dinners. The present palace is the third on the site, completed in the early twentieth century after fires destroyed the two before it, and it is a grand, granite-faced building in a neo-Baroque style, crowned by a tall tower. For visitors there are four parts, sold separately or together on a single palace ticket. The Royal Reception Rooms are the highlight: a sequence of gilded and painted halls including the Throne Room, the Velvet Room and the Great Hall, which is hung with the Queen's Tapestries, a set of seventeen tapestries telling a thousand years of Danish history, designed by the artist Bjorn Norgaard as a gift for Queen Margrethe's fiftieth birthday and finished in 2000. From the balcony outside, new monarchs are proclaimed; King Frederik X was proclaimed here in January 2024. Beneath the palace, the Ruins reveal the foundations of Absalon's castle and the later Copenhagen Castle, an atmospheric underground walk through eight centuries of the city's story. The Royal Kitchen shows a working palace kitchen of copper pans and long tables, and the Royal Stables still house horses and a collection of state carriages. Visits are now run by the Royal Danish Collection. The palace ticket costs around 215 DKK online and 225 DKK at the door, individual parts cost less, children under 18 enter free, and the rooms are closed on Mondays and occasionally for royal events. Next door, the seventeenth-century Stock Exchange, Borsen, is under scaffolding: it was badly damaged by fire in April 2024, and its rebuilding is expected to last until 2029.

The layers of history are what make Christiansborg special. Absalon, the warrior-bishop who founded Copenhagen, built a fortified castle here in 1167, and the ruins of his walls are the oldest remains of the city you can see. Copenhagen Castle replaced it and served as the royal residence for centuries, then the first Christiansborg, a vast Baroque palace, burned in 1794, sending the royal family to Amalienborg, where it has lived ever since. The second palace burned in 1884, and the current building rose in its place, with the reception rooms decorated over the following decades. Politics moved in at the same time, which is why the monarch and parliament share the building today, with the royal wing and the parliamentary wing side by side.

How to visit well: if you have time for only one part, choose the Royal Reception Rooms, which come with an audio guide and take about an hour. Add the Ruins, which are short and fascinating, and then decide on the kitchen and stables, which are best for families and anyone interested in daily palace life; the stables keep shorter afternoon hours. Online tickets are cheaper than tickets at the door. Overshoes are provided in the reception rooms to protect the floors. The reception rooms close at short notice for royal events, so check the calendar before you go. Parliament itself can be visited on free guided tours on selected days, booked separately through the Folketing.

Slotsholmen is a rewarding place to linger. The palace chapel, the riding ground with its stables, Thorvaldsens Museum with its colourful facade and the National Museum are all within a few minutes' walk, and the Royal Library's Black Diamond extension sits on the harbour behind. Borsen, the Old Stock Exchange with its famous spire of four entwined dragon tails, was badly damaged by fire on 16 April 2024, when the spire collapsed; King Frederik laid a foundation stone for its reconstruction in September 2024, and the work, using traditional materials, is projected to finish in 2029. Until then, expect scaffolding and a temporary roof on the building next to the palace.