Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 02/07/2026 23:44:00

Denmark's first architectural competition produced a red-brick cathedral for books. The old University Library at Fiolstraede 1, behind the University of Copenhagen's main building on Frue Plads, was won and built by Johan Daniel Herholdt between 1857 and 1861 - the country's oldest library institution, founded 1482, finally moving out of its cramped hall above Trinitatis Church and down the Round Tower's impractical spiral. Herholdt's Neo-Gothic design, with columns crowned in beehive capitals borrowed from Verona's San Fermo, was the first Danish building carried on a cast-iron structural system, and its emphatic red brick set the tone for half a century of Danish civic architecture. The great book hall is the heart: a luminous nave of galleries and iron columns that ranks among Copenhagen's most beautiful interiors, its gable toward Frue Plads deliberately continuing the university's row of seven triangular gables. The library served generations of scholars until 2009, when the collections moved and the building fell quiet - until a comprehensive, respectful restoration returned it to public life in 2023 as a venue for research dissemination, exhibitions and events. Today's visitor programme makes the magic accessible: the book hall with poster exhibitions on the university's history, research and great personalities, daily guided tours (14:00 in English, 13:00 in Danish) including the historic university quadrangle, a shop of university merchandise, and a weekly calendar of talks, debates and celebrations under the vaults - thesis parties included. Opening runs Tuesday-Saturday roughly 10:00-17:00, closed Sunday and Monday; entrance is 75 kroner with under-18s free, and the door stands one minute from both Norreport and the cathedral in the densest corner of the Latin Quarter.