The hall, which extends nearly eight metres up through two floors, is considered one of Europe’s most beautiful Rococo interiors. It was fitted up in the mid 1700s by the palace’s builder, Adam Gottlob Moltke, who was Frederik V’s Lord High Steward and close friend.  

The walls of the room are decorated with faint light green panels with carved, gilded Rococo ornaments, which together with high mirrors and large chandeliers make the room radiant when it is used for festive occasions and events. The ornaments were made by the Frenchman le Clerc, while the stucco ceiling with gilded rocaille designs was created by the Italian, Fossati. The floors are the original oak parquet laid in diagonal squares. 

The banquet hall’s most prominent paintings are the Frenchman Louis Tocqué’s four-metre high, full-figure portraits of the then-king, Frederik V – who is also seen on a horse on the palace square  – and his queen, Juliane Marie.Over the doors and fireplaces hang the French court painter Boucher’s paintings of small children, the so-called Little C7 putti, who play with various objects related to the arts and sciences: a tambourine and a music book symbolize, for example, “music”, a column frustum and a ruler “architecture”, and a globe and a map of Denmark “geography”. An elegantly interwoven symbolism, which educated visitors to Moltke’s home understood to decode and thus grasp what a cultivated man of the world they visited. The symbolism is repeated in the room’s panels and even on the palace’s façade.  

During the restoration of the palace in 1996, copies of the hall’s original hand-embroidered curtains were woven in France. These were reconstructed based on a remnant of the original 1700s curtains Queen Ingrid had found stashed away at Frederiksborg Palace.

Read more about Christian VII’s Palace.

Read more about the New Year’s banquet and New Year’s levee.