Thorvaldsens Museum

Thorvaldsens Museum is one of the most beautiful small museums in Europe and one of the great bargains of Copenhagen. It stands on Slotsholmen, right beside Christiansborg Palace, and it was built in the 1840s to house the life's work of Bertel Thorvaldsen, the Danish sculptor who became one of the most celebrated artists of his age. Thorvaldsen, born in Copenhagen in 1770, spent some forty years in Rome, where he became a leading figure of Neoclassicism, carving gods, heroes and monuments in white marble for patrons across Europe. When he returned home in 1838, he was greeted as a national hero, and he gave his works and his collections to the city, which built this museum to hold them. It opened in 1848, four years after his death, as the first public museum building in Denmark. The architect, Michael Gottlieb Bindesboll, created something entirely original: the exterior is painted in ochre, with a long frieze by Jorgen Sonne showing Thorvaldsen's triumphant homecoming to Copenhagen, and the interior is a sequence of rooms painted in deep reds, blues and greens, with richly decorated vaulted ceilings, mosaic floors and a central courtyard where the sculptor himself is buried, under a simple grave covered in ivy. The contrast between the colourful rooms and the white marble and plaster sculptures is striking, and the museum feels like a total work of art rather than a gallery. The collection includes many of Thorvaldsen's most famous works, among them Jason with the Golden Fleece, the statue that made his name, as well as portrait busts, reliefs and the original plaster models of his great monuments, which fill the large hall on the ground floor. Upstairs, his private collections of paintings, antiquities from Egypt, Greece and Rome, and personal belongings give a sense of the man and his world. The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00, and closed on Mondays. Adults pay around 110 DKK, under-18s go free, and at the time of writing admission is free for everyone on Wednesdays.

To understand Thorvaldsen's fame, imagine a sculptor who carved monuments to popes, princes and poets, whose studio in Rome was a stop for every traveller on the Grand Tour, and whose return to Copenhagen drew crowds to the harbour. His style, calm, idealised and inspired by ancient Greek sculpture, defined the taste of an era, and the museum shows both his public works and the intimate side of his art in the portrait busts of friends and patrons. His influence in Copenhagen goes beyond the museum: the great statues of Christ and the twelve apostles in the Cathedral of Our Lady, a few minutes' walk away and free to visit, are among his masterpieces.

How to visit well: allow about an hour, start in the vestibule and the great hall with the monumental plaster models, then walk through the small rooms of the ground floor, each built around a single work or group, before going upstairs to the collections. Pause in the courtyard at the sculptor's grave. Look up as you go, as the ceilings are among the most beautiful in the city, each painted differently. Wednesday is free for all, which makes it busier; on other days, the museum is often wonderfully quiet. Under-18s are free every day.

The museum sits in the middle of a cluster of sights on Slotsholmen. Christiansborg Palace, with its royal reception rooms and ruins, is next door, the National Museum is just across the canal, and canal tours depart nearby from Ved Stranden. After the museum, walk across to the Cathedral of Our Lady to see Thorvaldsen's Christ and apostles, then on through the Latin Quarter to the Round Tower. It is a perfect rainy-day stop, and one of the best ways to spend an hour in the old city.