Denmark's first public museum is also its most colourful grave. Thorvaldsens Museum on Bertel Thorvaldsens Plads, beside Christiansborg on Slotsholmen, opened on 18 September 1848 as the world's first museum devoted to a single artist: the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, who left Copenhagen for Rome in 1796, returned in 1838 as Europe's most celebrated living artist, and donated his entire collection - sculptures, models, paintings and antiquities - to the Danish people. The building is half the experience. Architect Michael Gottlieb Bindesboll, a personal friend from the Rome years, transformed the royal carriage yard behind the palace chapel into a temple of polychrome historicism between 1839 and 1848 - trapezoid portals with Egyptian ears, a facade frieze by Jorgen Sonne depicting Thorvaldsen's triumphant 1838 homecoming, a Victory in her four-horse chariot on the roof, and interiors saturated in the strong colours the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum had just revealed antiquity actually wore. Bindesboll even recreated the high diagonal light of Thorvaldsen's Roman studios through the tall workshop windows. The sculptor did not live to see it - he died in 1844 and lies buried in the central courtyard, making the museum literally his mausoleum. The collection walks through the neoclassical canon - Jason with the Golden Fleece, the Christ of the Vor Frue cathedral commission, portrait busts of half of Europe - alongside Thorvaldsen's own collections of paintings and ancient artefacts, with the Works & Days exhibition in the basement. Practicalities: the listed 1840s building has no lift, so upper galleries require stairs, though the ground floor is wheelchair-accessible; a cafe and shop serve the visit, and Christiansborg, the old stock exchange and Nyhavn all sit within five minutes' walk.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Bertel Thorvaldsens Plads 2, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1213

Website: https://www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk

Opening Date: 18/09/1848