6 Jun 2017 - Copenhagen Day 1: Christiansborg Palace and Thorvaldsens Museum

After a short rest in our hotel room, we began our exploration of Copenhagen for the rest of the day.  Looking through the list of free admission and rides included in the Copenhagen cards, we decided to go for the canal cruise.  We took a bus from Central station and it was just a short journey.  At the canal cruise ticket office, we were told that the cruise runs every half hour and last cruise departs at 6pm.  Due to that, we decided to board a later cruise and visit other attraction that closes earlier.  The obvious choice was a visit to Christiansborg Palace, which is just across the road.

Christiansborg is a palace and government building on the islet of Slotsholmen in central Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the seat of the Danish Parliament, the Danish Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court of Denmark. The palace is thus home to the three supreme powers: the executive power, the legislative power, and the judicial power. It is the only building in the world that houses all three of a country's branches of government.

The following is the statue of Frederick VII on the Palace Square.

We walked through a huge door to the Inner Courtyard.

Just a short walk from the Inner Courtyard, we arrived at Christiansborg Riding Grounds and the Royal Stables.

Here we saw the King Christian IX's equestrian statue, which should not be confused with the statue of Frederick VII on the Palace Square

The interior of the palace is very grand and beautiful.

The palace today bears witness to three eras of Danish architecture, as the result of two serious fires. The first fire occurred in 1794 and the second in 1884.

The Royal Reception Rooms at Christiansborg Palace are located on the ground floor and first floor in the northern half of the palace. The Rooms are used for official functions of the monarch such as banquets, state dinners, the New Year's levée, diplomatic accreditations, audiences and meetings of the council of state.

The Throne Room is where foreign ambassadors present their credentials to the Queen.

Next we visited the ruins under the palace.

The ruins beneath the palace square were excavated in 1917 and a cover was also built over them. The ruins have been open to the public since 1924. The Ruins Exhibition was renovated during the period 1974-77 and has remained more or less untouched since then.

Thorvaldsens Museum sits right next to Christiansborg Palace.  Its admission is included in our Copenhagen cards. Thorvaldsens Museum opened on 18 September 1848 and was the first public museum building in Denmark. The characteristic museum building was built to exhibit the extensive life’s work of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) and today still looks more or less as it did when it opened over 150 years ago.

Decorated ceilings, mosaic floors and Bertel Thorvaldsen’s sculptures in plaster and marble – the museum offers a world-class art and architecture experience.

Thorvaldsen was a passionate collector, so the museum also exhibits his extensive collections of paintings from his own time and collections of artworks and objects from Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquity.

There are several floors in the museum and we visited all.

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