The Royal Reception Rooms at Christiansborg Palace
Frederik IV had the medieval Copenhagen Castle demolished soon after his accession to the throne, and between 1735 and 1745 he built the first Christiansborg Palace, which, however, was ravaged by a fire in 1794. The second Christiansborg Palace was completed in 1828 during the reign of Frederik VI, but in 1884 also this palace burned. The third Christiansborg Palace was built between 1907 and 1928. Frederik VIII laid the cornerstone and Christian X inaugurated the palace.
The Royal Reception Rooms at Christiansborg Palace are located in the first floor of the palace, the so-called bel étage, in the northern part of the main wing and in the wing adjoining Prins Jorgen’s Gaard. The Reception Rooms are used for the New Year Levee, evening parties, gala banquets and ambassadorial audiences. The Royal Reception Rooms were inaugurated with a grand party on 12 January 1928, an occasion which is considered the official inauguration of the palace.
The Royal Reception Rooms are richly decorated, both with works of art salvaged from the two previous palaces and with decorations made by some of the best artists of that day, as well as with a splendid contemporary addition in the shape of Bjorn Norgaard’s tapestries made for Queen Margrethe.
Brief presentation of the Royal Reception Rooms
Visitors approach the Royal Reception Rooms along the King's Staircase, at the end of which to the right one enters the Tower Room. Here the visitor sees a series of tapestries with motifs from Danish folk ballads, designed by Joakim Skovgaard. Across from this lies the Throne Room with the two thrones. This oval room is decorated with a great ceiling painting, the motif of which is the Dannebrog, which according to legend fell from the sky in Estonia in AD 1219. The artist who created this painting was Kræsten Iversen. Christian IX’s Cabinet contains six marble busts of, respectively, Christian IX and Queen Louise, Frederik VIII and Queen Lovisa, and Christian X and Queen Alexandrine. The Fredensborg Room is entirely dominated by Laurits Tuxen’s great painting of Christian IX and Queen Louise surrounded by their family in the Garden Room at Fredensborg Palace. In Frederik VI’s Cabinet hang four large Eckersberg paintings, which were salvaged from the fire that ravaged the second Christiansborg Palace. The Velvet Cabinet was used as throne room until 1933, which is the reason for the high ceiling and the fine marble portals. The Corner Chamber contains Laurits Tuxen’s great painting of “The Four Generations”, showing Christian IX and the Princes Frederik (VIII), Christian (X) and Frederik (IX).
The Banqueting Hall is the largest of the Reception Rooms, 40 metres long and 10 metres high with a gallery running along its sides. Retracted into the ceiling are three large paintings by Kræsten Iversen, symbolising the legislative, the executive and the judiciary powers. The Hall was originally decorated with Cristian V’s tapestries from Rosenborg Palace, but these tapestries were returned to Rosenborg Palace when the gift from Danish commerce, trade and industry on the occasion of Queen Margrethe’s 50th birthday in 1990, the Danish sculptor Bjorn Norgaard’s 17 tapestries with motifs selected from 1000 years of Danish history, were put up in the Hall in connection with the Queen’s 60th birthday on 16 April 2000.
The Royal Dining Hall has three retracted mural paintings, showing Christian VI, Frederik VI and Christian VIII. The Abildgaard Room takes its name from the three large paintings from Nicolai Abildgaard’s series of royal paintings salvaged from the first Christiansborg Palace: Christian I, Christian III and Frederik II. The Alexander Room is lavishly decorated. The most important of the decorations is Bertel Thorvaldsen’s marble frieze “The Entry of Alexander the Great into Babylon”, which was made for the second Christiansborg Palace and partly survived the fire in 1884, and which was restored and put up in this room.
